Support for Cardiovascular Health in African American Primary Care Patients

Summary

Project Overview:

Poor hypertension control has dire consequences for the African-American population who suffer greater death and disability from heart disease, stroke, and renal failure than whites. To reduce these health disparities it is critical to promote of a healthy lifestyle in regard to diet, exercise, adherence to medications, as well as other behaviors. However, physicians usually fail to address lifestyle behaviors in the context of the harried patient visit. Therefore, the investigators hypothesized that the investigators could reduce cardiovascular risk by providing additional support to persons with poorly controlled hypertension through phone calls from trained peer patients and visits to an office support staff member.

Study Design:

A single-blind, randomized, controlled trial in 280 African-American primary care patients aged 40-75 with poorly controlled hypertension (HTN). The intervention group receives a practice-based team intervention that combines peer coach with office staff (i.e., medical assistant or licensed practice nurse) visits to address lifestyle challenges. Both intervention and control groups receive informational materials and healthy soul food recipes from the American Heart Association. The 6 month intervention alternates monthly phone calls from peer coaches about lifestyle behavioral changes with office-based visits with the support staff member during which patients review and discuss low literacy slide shows about healthy behaviors as well as examine their personal cardiovascular risk profile.

Conditions

• Cardiovascular Diseases
• Blood Pressure

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Peer Coach Phone Calls

Subjects will receive 3 phone calls from a trained peer coach over 6 months.

BEHAVIORAL

Health Educator Visits

Subjects will meet 2 times with a trained health educator in the practice

OTHER

written materials

Subjects will receive written material and brochures and a cookbook from the American Heart Association addressing healthy lifestyle

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

  collaborator OTHER

• Pfizer

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• University of Pennsylvania

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Mark G Weiner, MD · University of Pennsylvania

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

40 Years

Max Age

75 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2008-05-31

Primary Completion

2010-12-31

Completion

2011-01-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations