Effect of Peer Mentoring and Blood Pressure Self-monitoring on Hypertension Control.

Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy

Status: Completed

Conditions: Hypertension

Treatments: Behavioral: Peer mentoring; Behavioral: Self-monitoring

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03297229

AR-T1087-P0001

Details and patient eligibility

About

Cardiovascular diseases are increasing throughout the developing world and are the cause of almost 16.7 million deaths each year, of which 80% occur in low and middle-income countries. As more than three fourth of the global burden of cardiometabolic diseases are related to risk factors connected with lifestyles or behaviors, such as smoking, unhealthy eating, low physical activity, and harmful consumption of alcohol. This burden could be dramatically reduced by changing individual behaviors. This study is focused on interventions that are aimed to improve the adherence to treatment in cardiovascular disease (hypertension), based on a Behavioral Economics approach. Most of public policies targeted to tackle Noncommunicable diseases utilize a rational economic model of behavior.

Behavioral economics, by using insights from cognitive psychology and other social sciences, has drawn a lot of attention for its potential to increase healthy behaviors. Interventions informed by Behavioral economics principles seek to rearrange the social or physical environment in such a way to 'nudge' people towards healthier choices and behaviors. This is an individual controlled randomized trial which will be conducted to assess whether the implementation of two strategies, blood pressure self-monitoring plus signing a "contract of commitment", and peer mentoring are effective to reduce blood pressure values over a period of 3 months, compared to usual care. This randomized trial will enroll 430 patients from 10 public primary care clinics in Argentina.

Enrollment: 442 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 21+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Adults (21 years and older) who only have public health coverage, and have high blood pressure (SBP ≥140 mmHg and / or DBP ≥90 mmHg)

Exclusion criteria

• Pregnant women, bed-bound, and patients who cannot give informed consent.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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442 participants in 3 patient groups

Peer mentoring

Experimental group

Description:

Peers will be patients with hypertension that have already been adequately controlled within the last six months. They will be selected within each center by the staff of the center and invited to participate in the study.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Peer mentoring

Self-monitoring

Experimental group

Description:

Each participant will receive a blood pressure monitor. The study nurse will teach the participant on how to use the device.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Self-monitoring

Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Usual care