Kelechi Ibe-Lamberts

The concept of transnationalism has benefited from different socio-economic fields such as anthropology, social sciences, political sciences, geography, and health. Research in this field continues to display that the dynamics of immigration is continually progressive. Researchers agree that transnationalism can refer to the socio-cultural identity that is shaped by the inter-connectivity between more than one geographic distant places. Transnational Africans have been driven by the inter-connectivity between their countries of origin and their receiving countries; which in our case is the US.

When transnational Africans resettle in the US, they come with preconceive established health behaviors towards ailments such cardiovascular diseases like hypertension based on their experiences personally and within their community. There is a need for the continual exploration of this field because the majority of studies that focus on the interplay between health behaviors and cardiovascular diseases among blacks in the US did it by including all Blacks in general. This ongoing study will take a mixed method approach utilizing a cultural competent model in order to gain further insight on the relationship between transnational Africans and cardiovascular diseases by highlighting cultural practices and transnational activities that may influence health behaviors.