UAB has partnered with two other schools to conduct trials aimed at improving blood pressure in patients residing in the Black Belt. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).
Tamara Imam – Staff Writer
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UAB will lead a collaborative effort with the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and East Carolina University to begin conducting trials aimed at improving blood pressure in patients residing in the Black Belt region of the United States.
The project, titled “Collaboration to Improve Blood Pressure in the U.S. Black Belt- Addressing the Triple Threat,” received a $9.4 million grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to assess the effectiveness of two different strategies whose goals are to improve blood pressure control in Black Belt patients.
The Black Belt is a region in the southeast that stretches from Texas to Maryland. The region’s residents, many of which are African American, are at an increased risk for poor health outcomes due to the presence of a “Triple Threat”: rural residence, minority status and low socioeconomic status. The study will recruit people who meet these three criteria in the black belt regions of Alabama and North Carolina.
Additionally, the Black Belt is in the center of the Stroke Belt, which is a geographic region recognized for having the highest rate of cardiovascular disease mortality in the United States. Hypertension is a common risk factor for cardiovascular disease.
The trial will compare two strategies for improving blood pressure: practice facilitation and the use of peer coaches. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, practice facilitation is “an effective strategy to improve primary health care processes and outcomes, including the delivery of wellness and preventive services, through the creation of an ongoing, trusting relationship between an external facilitator and a primary care practice.”
The study’s other strategy, the use of peer coaches, will tackle mistrust in the health care system by allowing patients to develop positive relationships with their health care providers. Researchers will use cellphones to track the number of minutes each peer coach spends on the phone with participants.
UAB Professor of Diabetes Prevention and Outcomes Research Monika Safford, M.D., will lead the study.
“I am the Principal Investigator, which means that I developed the main idea and wrote the grant application. The Principal Investigator has the main responsibility for carrying out the study’s activities,” Safford said.
The trial will enroll 80 rural primary care practices in the Black Belt regions of Alabama and North Carolina and 25 African American patients with hypertension at each practice.
Dr. Safford believes that in addition to bringing care to patients in the Black Belt, the study will have a positive impact on UAB as an institution.
“This study will definitely be good for UAB. This was a national competition with all the big hypertension groups around the country competing. There were only 2 awards, the other going to Johns Hopkins University. This is excellent company for UAB to keep when things are reported in the national news,” Safford said. “More immediately, it increases the amount of NIH [National Institutes of Health] funding to the institution substantially, and this could raise UAB’s rank among research universities for the year.”
