Group Approach Helps Hypertension

Doctors have greater success lowering blood pressure when more are involved in prevention.

By Colin Allen, published on October 01, 2003

A group approach works better in reducing hypertension. Urban African-American men--a population at risk of hypertension--lowered their blood pressure more when they joined a group intervention program. Traditional one-on-one visits to the doctor's office did not work as well.

A group of 309 hypertensive black men between ages 21 to 51 living in inner city Baltimore joined a program promoting the benefits of lowered blood pressure. The group was divided in half, so that half received traditional care and half enrolled in a program that integrated treatment and other assistance. Each man was monitored each year for three years.

For the members of the comprehensive treatment group, nurses visited every one to three months to give away free high blood pressure medication. A local health worker provided assistance with social services such as job training, and house hunting. Members of the group getting traditional care were simply given referrals to the centers for hypertension care.

Both groups benefited from the intervention, but increased preventive care yielded better results. Intensive interventions helped 44 percent of the group bring their blood pressure under control, up from 17 percent before the study. Of the men who received only a referral, the number of participants with controlled blood pressure only climbed from 21 percent to 31 percent.

Hypertension arises in 30 percent of Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among blacks, it occurs more frequently, earlier and with greater severity. Study author Martha Hill, the dean of Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing, explains that early intervention is notably less expensive than a trip to hospital for cardiac troubles.

The study was published in this month's American Journal of Hypertension.