Authors’ Response to: Data sources for measuring the socioeconomic gradient of hypertension in rural populations of low- and middle-income countries

We thank Dr Raban for her recent correspondence which highlights an important issue in the use of data from health information systems to provide a more inclusive analysis of the association between socioeconomic position (SEP) and hypertension in various regions of low- and middle-income countries. 1 We agree there may be some advantages to using these relatively recent data, and we applaud Dr Raban for re-highlighting the availability of these unpublished data sources. However, as the author acknowledged, some of the surveys are disadvantaged by poor response rates, some are limited to women only and others do not include individuals in older age groups. 1 If severely restricted, this could limit the interpretation of the findings. In our systematic review and meta-analysis, we included data that were representative of the entire population 2 and so included older individuals, who are more likely to have hypertension. 3 Nevertheless, because the Measure Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (SAGE) data are unit level, this would enable more comprehensive exploration of the association between SEP and hypertension in different settings and groups. In conclusion, as these data grow and more regions are covered, there will be more opportunities to further assess differences in the association between SEP and non-communicable diseases between and within regions. We encourage the continued promotion of the availability of these data to a wider range of researchers. A.G.T. was supported by a senior research fellowship from the National Health & Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australia (1042600). M.A.R. and S.A. were supported through project grants from NHMRC (1005740 and 1040030). D.B. was supported by a Monash Faculty of Medicine International Postgraduate Scholarshipand a Monash Graduate Scholarship. A.K.S. was supported by a Monash Graduate Scholarship.