Stroke Health and Risk Education (SHARE)

Summary

Stroke is a disease with tremendous individual, family, and societal impact. It is the number one cause of adult disability and third leading cause of death in the United States. Between now and the year 2050, the cost of stroke in the United States will exceed 2 trillion dollars. There is a tremendous ethnic disparity with respect to stroke in the United States. Mexican Americans are much more likely to have a stroke compared with European Americans. In Mexican Americans strokes occur at younger ages, are more likely to recur and have the same severity as they do in European Americans. Mexican Americans are the overwhelming largest sub-population of Hispanic Americans, the nation's largest minority group. This proposal, a scientifically-based rigorous behavioral education intervention trial, seeks to aggressively prevent stroke, especially in Mexican Americans.

Faith and family are strong components of Mexican American culture. This project works with these positive fundamental elements in order to affect stroke prevention. This project will take place in Nueces County, Texas. The project investigators have worked in this community for the past 14 years and have published extensively regarding the stroke health disparity in this stable, non-immigrant community of Mexican Americans and European Americans. We have established a strong partnership with the Catholic Diocese of Corpus Christi and assembled a team with tremendous experience at successful health behavior intervention research. Together, a proposal has been crafted that will directly speak to aggressive stroke risk factor reduction in Mexican Americans and European Americans in this representative United States community.

The significance of such research is tremendous. As the Mexican American population grows and ages, the stroke impact will be felt with greater and greater intensity. Now is the time to develop aggressive, scientifically tested interventions to limit the burden of this disease on this important segment of the United States population, and to reduce the costs of this disease to the country as a whole, in keeping with the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) goal to "identify culturally appropriate, effective stroke prevention programs for nationwide implementation in minority communities" by FY2010.

Conditions

• Stroke
• Hypertension

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Educational intervention for diet and physical activity

The proposed project, SHARE, is a culturally-tailored, primary stroke prevention intervention for MAs and EAs that targets a number of health-related behaviors related to stroke risk. Using a combination of self-help materials, social support, peer counseling based on Motivational interviewing, tailored newsletters, and social environmental changes in Catholic Churches, the SHARE intervention will lead to increases in moderate and vigorous intensity physical activity, decreases in salt intake, and increases in fruit and vegetable intake. Additional targets include decreases in BMI for those overweight or obese, reduction of dietary fat (trans, saturated and total fat), and increases in low-fat dairy products, changes that will serve to reduce blood pressure and stroke risk. Additionally, SHARE will seek to improve hypertension medication adherence in participants with previously diagnosed high blood pressure at baseline screening.

BEHAVIORAL

Educational message on skin cancer awareness

Control group will get the diet and physical activity intervention after the crossover but no outcomes will be measured after the crossover

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)

  collaborator NIH

• Diocese of Corpus Christi, Texas, USA

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Michigan

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2011-05-31

Primary Completion

2013-12-31

Completion

2013-12-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations