ABSTRACT
Introduction: Many studies showed that police officers complained about physical and mental health issues due to job stress. These work stresses lead to adop?ng unhealthy lifestyles and habits including the harmful use of alcohol and tobacco use which leads to high blood pressure, heart a?acks, and other NCDs. Methods: This cross-sec?onal study included all male police personnel of all cadres from nine police sta?ons of Karimnagar Mandal. WHO STEPS NCD survey ques?onnaires were used to collect basic soci-demographic informa?on, clinical history, stress, and anthropometry for measurements of CVD risk factors. Result: 253 police personnel with a mean age of 41.09 years enrolled from all cadres. 152 (60%) of police personnel had mul?ple cardiovascular risk factors. Hypercholesterolemia (37.2%) followed by a sedentary lifestyle (30.8%), and diabetes mellitus (14.6%) were important findings in this study. This study has also revealed an important link between preceding condi?ons for developing cardiovascular diseases such as pre-hypertension in 42.7% and impaired fas?ng glucose level in 25.7% of police personnel. Half of the study police personnel had a family history of NCDs and it was not sta?s?cally significant with service experience. There was a strong associa?on between years of experience and tobacco and alcohol use. Organiza?onal and opera?onal stress levels increased with the increase in years of experience in policing (p-value<0. 01). Conclusion: Smoking and alcohol consump?on were more prevalent among Police personnel which need to be controlled. Physical inac?vity was another important area. Their a?tude towards controlling the risk factors and prac?cing healthy behavior to safeguard from cardiovascular diseases has to be strengthened. It can be done by conduc?ng regular awareness camps, training sessions, and regular cardiac risk factor evalua?ons for all police personnel.