Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Baby boomers are now the fastest growing segment of the population and they are making greater use of social services than previous generations. Older adults spend increasingly more time and money on self-care due to health declines brought on by aging. People often find it quite hard to adhere to their care professional's recommendations, particularly when the prescribed recommendations include medicines that cause unpleasant side effects. This project will examine factors that affect compliance rates to prescribed health regimes in young retirees who have high blood pressure. They will be supplied with a device that has been clinically shown to lower blood pressure by guiding users through 15 minute sessions of breathing exercises aimed to lower their breathing rates which helps blood vessels relax and blood pressure to go down. The device has no side effects because it only guides users through breathing exercises to music and there is no medicine involved. As a result, factors that affect compliance will not be due to prescription drug side-effects. This enables researchers to really zero in on underlying reasons that affect compliance that may be impeding good health outcomes. This type of research would shed light on the individual and psychosocial influences that interfere with adherence to health programs. The findings would allow care providers, social services, counsellors, and care facilities to allocate resources more efficiently by specifically targeting clients who are struggling more with compliance. The long-term benefits would be improved health outcomes for seniors, as well as decreased wait times for services, and lower costs to taxpayers.