Giving Compass' Take:
- Research reveals that community health workers can help rural citizens manage blood pressure maintenance and medication to advance positive long-term health outcomes for these communities.
- How can this research help rural funders support community-based health? What are some of the unique health challenges for rural areas?
- Read about the importance of community workers in health equity.
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Training community health workers on how to prescribe and adjust anti-hypertension medications and how to coach people to better manage their blood pressure could significantly benefit patients with high blood pressure in rural areas, researchers report.
High blood pressure is a leading cause of heart disease and early death, but many across the globe live in areas with limited access to high-quality health care.
The problem is especially serious in rural China where little more than 5% of hypertension patients have their blood pressure under control.
The new study in The Lancet finds that these hard-to-reach patients could benefit from a simple intervention.
The study shows that community health workers, or “village doctors,” successfully treated people with uncontrolled high blood pressure in 326 villages in rural China using a standard treatment protocol and health coaching, resulting in over half of the people in the intervention group reaching normal blood pressure levels within 18 months. During the study, 57% of patients who were treated and coached by the village doctors were able to lower their blood pressure below 130/80 mm Hg and 77% had blood pressure levels lower than 140/90 mm Hg.
“To our knowledge, our study is the first randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of a community health worker-led intervention, in which they initiated and adjusted anti-hypertensive medications, on blood pressure control,” says lead author Jiang He, director of the Translational Science Institute at Tulane University.
“The village doctors were appropriately trained, had prescribing authority, followed a standard hypertension management protocol, and were supervised by primary care physicians and hypertension specialists.”
The study included nearly 34,000 adults, ages of 40 years and older, with either blood pressure levels 140/90 mm Hg or higher who were not being treated when the study began; people with blood pressure levels 130/80 mm Hg or higher who were taking blood pressure medication; or people with blood pressure levels 130/80 mm Hg or higher who also had a history of clinical cardiovascular disease.
Read the full article about community health workers by Keith Brannon at Futurity.