Eliakim Konje Moses

Prehypertension is the precursor to hypertension. It’s anticipated that prehypertension will affect one-third of the population worldwide by 2025. For instance, Homa Bay County Hospital has reported increase of pre-hypertensive patients over the past 5 years. Thus, this study aimed to determine the effects of prescribed low-intensity resistance exercise on prehypertension and other related factors in individuals living within Homa Bay Township. A randomized controlled trial study design was employed on 34 (17 experimental and 17 controls) pre-hypertensive adults. Participants performed prescribed low-intensity resistance exercise for a period of 3 months. Blood pressure, biochemical, and anthropometric data were collected on pre, mid, and post-training. ANOVA with a within-subjects factor of time, and treatment type was used to determine the differences between the two groups. Except for BMI [F (1, 32) =8.06, p=0.008], the study found that the prescribed low-intensity resistance exercise did not affect other anthropometric measurement of pre-hypertensive individuals. Prescribed low-intensity resistance exercises significantly, F (1, 32) =5.01, p=0.03, lowered the pre-hypertensive pressure in the experimental group to normotensive at post-study (from 127.59+5.01 to 115.88+6.06 mmHg systolic pressure) as compared to the control group (from 128.94+4.64 to 122.47+2.87 mmHg systolic pressure). Although lipid profiles and fasting blood glucose decreased in both experimental and control groups, the decline was more marked in the experimental group, suggesting that prescribed low-intensity exercise could decrease the variables. This study provides evidence that prescribed low-intensity resistance exercises prescription in prehypertension can prevent progression to hypertension.

Students who are admitted within 68 Kenya Medical Training College (KMTC) Campuses for various healthcare programs are highly qualified and they are chosen through a competitive admission criterion. However, their performance in college exams does not reflect the same. For instance, approximately 26% of students sat for supplementary exams in the year 2017. This performance trend implies that there may be challenges in the implementation of student-centered learning (SCL) approaches among the lecturers. Due to this, the researcher decided to conduct a research study on SCL challenges among lecturers. Cross-sectional descriptive study with researcher-administered questionnaires among 61 lecturers (both internal and external) was employed within KMTC-Campuses within South Nyanza Region namely; Nyamira, Kisii, Homa Bay, and Migori. The study adopted purposeful sampling to select KMTC-Campuses and saturated sampling of the participants. The finding concluded that although the ratio of students to lecturers (1:45) was within the recommended standards, the level of awareness and practice of SCL by the lecturers was low within the KMTC-Campuses. The study indicated that lecturers had little involvement to enhance SCL activities within their various campuses even though their instructional design has an impact on SCL especially on new approaches to tasks, activities and classroom discourse. The study concluded that the inadequacy of SCL resources affects its effective implementation. The researchers recommend that further studies be done on the exposure of students to various participatory learning methodologies and the provision of SCL resources.