Youth-Led Intervention to Improve Blood Pressure

Summary

The proposed study will develop, test, and collect implementation data on a youth-led hypertension (HTN) education intervention, which will act as an electronic tool to guide youth through learning and then teaching adults on how to achieve better HTN control. Adults with HTN and youth will be recruited for user-centered design sessions to provide input in the development of a youth-led HTN education digital badge. The investigators will then recruit adult emergency department (ED) patients with uncontrolled HTN (blood pressure (BP) ≥130/80 mm Hg) who know (friend or family member) a youth (14-24 years old) and the youth themselves for a RCT. The adult plus youth dyad will be randomized to either: 1) intervention arm- 6-week youth-led HTN education digital badge at home- or 2) control arm- 6-week youth job readiness digital badge at home. In addition to the primary study outcome of adult BP change 2-months post-intervention, the investigator will collect secondary outcomes of HTN knowledge and youth self-efficacy, as well as implementation metrics of intervention acceptability, feasibility, and fidelity. Due to challenges recruiting youth through adults in the ED, we will be adding a cohort to the study where we will recruit interested youth from New Brunswick Health Sciences Technology High School (NBHSTHS).

Specific aims are:

Aim 1: Create a youth-led HTN education digital badge by means of user-centered design methods and community engagement with adults with HTN and youth to obtain input on the contents of the digital badge prior to implementation.

Aim 1a: The hypertension knowledge assessment being used in the study has not been used before on youth or Spanish-speaking populations, so the investigators will obtain feedback on the assessment from these groups.

Aim 2: Evaluate the effectiveness of a youth-led HTN education digital badge intervention on the primary outcome of mean systolic BP and diastolic BP change in adults with uncontrolled HTN at 2-months post-intervention compared to the control group (for participants recruited from the ED). Additionally, evaluate change in HTN knowledge and youth self-efficacy.

Aim 3: Evaluate the implementation process of the youth-led HTN education digital badge by collecting qualitative and quantitative data on acceptability, feasibility, and fidelity of the intervention by participants.

Conditions

• Hypertension
• Adolescent Behavior
• Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Youth-Led Hypertension Education Digital Intervention

The intervention is a youth-led HTN education digital intervention, which will be comprised of a 6-week playlist of one module per week comprising the playlist. Youth will learn from the module and will teach the adult in their dyad about hypertension education in each week's themed module.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)

  collaborator NIH

• Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

NA

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

14 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-10-31

Primary Completion

2023-06-30

Completion

2023-06-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations