Co-morbidity was defined as HTN associated with diabetes mellitus or target organ damage (heart disease, stroke, or chronic kidney disease) based on diagnosis made by a healthcare provider. Antihypertensive types were categorized in two groups, monotherapy if a patient was on one type of antihypertensive medication and multitherapy if a patient was on two or more types of antihypertensive medications. Treatment adherence was measured using the Morisky Scale, which is a validated four-item scale with good internal consistency based on studies of inner-city patients with HTN [23, 24]. Patients responded “yes” or “no” to four questions (Do you ever forget to take your medicine? Are you careless at times about taking your medicine? When you feel better, do you sometimes stop taking your medicine? Sometimes if you feel worse when you take the medicine, do you stop taking it?). Based on their responses, patients were categorized into three groups: high, medium and low adherence. To facilitate statistical analysis, adherence was dichotomized with patients with low or medium adherence classified as non-adherent and patients with high adherence classified as adherent .