Social Norms and Antihypertensive Medication Adherence

Summary

The study objective is to build group social norms to improve individual adhere to antihypertensive medications. Financial incentives are provided to individuals contingent upon group behavioral changes. Groups of patients will be formed, and incentivized to interact on a daily basis through social media and participate in a monthly-facilitated meeting at a local clinic. By forming groups, making individual outcomes transparent, and setting financial incentives contingent to group targets, individual decisions are framed within emerging social norms.

Conditions

• Hypertension
• Medication Adherence

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Financial reward

In contingency management, financial rewards are contingent upon an individual changing behavior. In our study, financial incentives are contingent upon group behavioral changes.. In the intervention phase participants will be randomly assigned to one of the three treatment arms and they will receive the financial incentive that corresponds to their treatment arm. Data will be collected for four months and all participants will continue receiving a compensation for participation

BEHAVIORAL

Social norms

To build social norms the study adds a group component to a contingency management model. In contingency management, financial rewards are contingent upon an individual changing behavior. Social norms are expected to emerge as a result of the designed group contingency management, monthly-facilitated meetings at a local clinic, and daily basis interaction through social media. The intervention will build social norms that improve medication adherence of each member of a group. A three-arm randomize trial is designed to test this hypothesis. Hypertensive patients will be randomly assigned to a group contingency management (GCM) arm, an individual contingency management (ICG) arm, or a control arm.

DEVICE

Home Blood Pressure Monitoring

Participants will be reminded that they will receive and learn how to use a Home Blood Pressure Monitor (HBPM) device that participant will keep for the duration of the study

DEVICE

Medication adherence assessment

Participants will be informed that they will receive and learn how to use eCap, a medication event monitoring system that participants will return after completing the study. The project nursing student will count the number of pills the participant currently has and make a record of it on the Data Collection form.The participant will provide the project nursing student with his/her antihypertension prescription records so that the dosage amount and number of pills can be recorded on the Data Collection form.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Florida International University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Alejandro Arrieta, PhD · Florida International University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

TRIPLE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Min Age

35 Years

Max Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-09-30

Primary Completion

2019-09-30

Completion

2020-03-31