Numerous studies have shown that nurse practitioners in the United States perform a large percentage of the services provided by family practice physicians. It is also known that nurse practitioners provide care and support for "lifestyle management" through teaching, and counseling for concerns like nutrition, exercise, weight reduction, smoking cessation, growth and development, family planning and psychosocial needs. Hence, it is important for nurse practitioners to be very aware of cultural backgrounds for their patients. To this end, primary care providers, including nurse practitioners, should be sensitive to the patients' culture which includes the social status, cultural norms, expressions of language and general ways of living. This understanding should make it easier to get patients to adhere to important medical treatments like hypertension.

The purpose of this directed project is to compare the ratings of healthcare provider's cultural competency made by adherent (those who follow their hypertension drug regimen) versus nonadherent patients in middle adult African-American who are 35–65 year olds. The adherent group gave significantly higher ratings for their healthcare provider than the nonadherent group when computing the scores of the Perceived Cultural Competency for their health providers' awareness of their culture as a patient.