Addressing Hypertension Care in Africa

NCT ID: NCT04010344

Last Updated: 2025-01-17

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

COMPLETED

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

240 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2019-07-14

Study Completion Date

2024-12-30

Brief Summary

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A pilot cluster randomized control trial to test the feasibility of a multilevel, nurse-led, mobile health enhanced intervention in patients with uncontrolled hypertension in Ghana

Detailed Description

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This is a two-arm pilot cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 240 participants with uncontrolled hypertension (HTN) with the healthcare setting as the unit of randomization and patients as the unit of analysis. Each of the four healthcare settings will be recruited and randomly assigned to the multilevel intervention or control group. A statistician will generate the randomization using a computer-generated random sequence program with an allocation ratio of 1:1 and a block size of 6 (to assure equal numbers in each arm). After having met study criteria for enrollment, 60 eligible patients for each setting will be assigned to either control or intervention arm according to the patients' healthcare setting's intervention assignment by the study coordinator. A cluster RCT has been chosen to avoid potential treatment contamination in which physicians within healthcare settings might unintentionally provide patients with different degrees of attention or blending of treatment protocols. The intervention will be administered for six months following which it will be withdrawn, and patients will be followed for six more months to assess outcomes.

The investigators will use quota sampling to over sample socioeconomically deprived persons to ensure that socioeconomically deprived persons comprise 50% of the sample. Poverty will be defined by (1) Household income, based on Ghana minimum monthly wage of 210 Ghana cedis (equivalent of $55). After screening eligible participants, the investigators will assign four clusters of 60 patients to the intervention or control arms. The investigators will require 30 patients in each cluster to be male and 30 to be female since in the investigators' previous work, men have been underrepresented potentially due to gender-differences in healthcare seeking behaviors. Men have also had inferior treatment and control rates in previous studies.

Conditions

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Hypertension Diabetes Telemedicine

Study Design

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Allocation Method

RANDOMIZED

Intervention Model

PARALLEL

Two-arm pilot cluster randomized control trial involving 240 participants with uncontrolled hypertension. The healthcare setting is the unit of randomization and patients are the unit of analysis. Each of the four healthcare settings will be recruited and randomly assigned to the multilevel intervention or control group. Randomization will be performed using a computer-generated random sequence program with a 1:1 allocation and a block size of 6 (to assure equal numbers in each arm). After meeting the study criteria for enrollment, 60 eligible patients for each setting will be assigned to either control or intervention arm according to their healthcare setting's intervention assignment by the study coordinator. The intervention will be administered for six months following which it will be withdrawn, and patients will be followed for six more months to assess outcomes.
Primary Study Purpose

TREATMENT

Blinding Strategy

DOUBLE

Participants Outcome Assessors
Other staff will conduct the evaluations using established protocols. They will remain blinded as to patients' group status throughout the study (i.e., pre-intervention, 1, 3, 6 \& 9-month evaluations).

Study Groups

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Enhanced Usual Care Group

All participants in the enhanced usual care arm must own a cell phone with at least short message service (SMS) and voicemail. To control for attention exposure, they will receive SMS messages daily dealing with healthy lifestyle behaviors (smoking, diet, physical activity) but not with medication adherence or hypertension-specific issues. Every three days (comparable to intervention group monitoring) they will receive an automated SMS directing them to a different 2-3 min video/YouTube™ clips on healthy lifestyles. Patients in this arm of the study will also receive usual care as determined by their providers. Usual care is described in the next section.

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

Enhanced Usual Care Group

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Medtronic® Labs' Akoma pa app, a culturally-tested and locally attuned mobile health platform, will be used in the intervention arm of the study to improve communication between the Community Health Officer (CHO) and the participant. This platform will be used to enhance shared decision making, clinical decision support, participatory communication, knowledge, treatment adherence (medication and lifestyle modification), and self-monitoring of hypertension. We will test the feasibility of the Akoma pa app in addressing patient-level and provider-level barriers to hypertension control.

The app will consist of the following components:

1. Reminders
2. Participant to CHO messaging
3. Home BP tracking
4. Educational materials on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and Stroke- Participants will have access to education modules on reducing the risk of CVD and stroke tailored to their knowledge level.
5. CHO provider portal- The provider portal will include decision support tools.

Usual Care

Patients in this arm of the study will receive usual care as determined by their providers. Usual care in the region typically involves at least one visit every 2-3 months for review of adherence to treatment, blood pressure control, and prescriptions for medication refills. Similar to the intervention group, participants will have a total of three follow-up visits which will be separate from their regular appointments during which study outcomes will be assessed.

Group Type ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Usual Care Group

Intervention Type OTHER

Regular/usual appointments or visits to patients' healthcare provider for management of study outcomes

Interventions

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Enhanced Usual Care Group

Medtronic® Labs' Akoma pa app, a culturally-tested and locally attuned mobile health platform, will be used in the intervention arm of the study to improve communication between the Community Health Officer (CHO) and the participant. This platform will be used to enhance shared decision making, clinical decision support, participatory communication, knowledge, treatment adherence (medication and lifestyle modification), and self-monitoring of hypertension. We will test the feasibility of the Akoma pa app in addressing patient-level and provider-level barriers to hypertension control.

The app will consist of the following components:

1. Reminders
2. Participant to CHO messaging
3. Home BP tracking
4. Educational materials on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and Stroke- Participants will have access to education modules on reducing the risk of CVD and stroke tailored to their knowledge level.
5. CHO provider portal- The provider portal will include decision support tools.

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Usual Care Group

Regular/usual appointments or visits to patients' healthcare provider for management of study outcomes

Intervention Type OTHER

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* Patients will be included if they are 18-70 years old;
* Male or female
* Uncontrolled hypertension (SBP ≥140 mm Hg) based upon last outpatient encounter within the previous three months
* Patients with previous strokes, coronary artery disease, up to stage three kidney disease and diabetes mellitus meeting BP cut-off criteria will be eligible for enrollment.

* Severe cognitive impairment/dementia (Modified Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score ≤24)
* Severe global disability (modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score ≥3)
* Not able to independently follow blood pressure measurement protocol or use of Smartphone for study protocol or without a care-giver to assist with BP monitoring at home
* Patients with estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) \<30ml/min
Minimum Eligible Age

18 Years

Maximum Eligible Age

70 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Sponsors

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Johns Hopkins Alliance for a Healthier World

UNKNOWN

Sponsor Role collaborator

Johns Hopkins University

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Responsibility Role SPONSOR

Principal Investigators

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Yvonne Commodore-Mensah, PhD, MHS, RN

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Johns Hopkins University

Locations

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Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital

Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana

Site Status

Kumasi South Hospital

Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana

Site Status

Manhyia Government Hospital

Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana

Site Status

Suntreso Government Hospital

Kumasi, Ashanti Region, Ghana

Site Status

Countries

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Ghana

References

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Kearney PM, Whelton M, Reynolds K, Muntner P, Whelton PK, He J. Global burden of hypertension: analysis of worldwide data. Lancet. 2005 Jan 15-21;365(9455):217-23. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(05)17741-1.

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Sarfo-Kantanka O, Sarfo FS, Oparebea Ansah E, Eghan B, Ayisi-Boateng NK, Acheamfour-Akowuah E. Secular Trends in Admissions and Mortality Rates from Diabetes Mellitus in the Central Belt of Ghana: A 31-Year Review. PLoS One. 2016 Nov 22;11(11):e0165905. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0165905. eCollection 2016.

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Reference Type BACKGROUND
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Benjamin EJ, Blaha MJ, Chiuve SE, Cushman M, Das SR, Deo R, de Ferranti SD, Floyd J, Fornage M, Gillespie C, Isasi CR, Jimenez MC, Jordan LC, Judd SE, Lackland D, Lichtman JH, Lisabeth L, Liu S, Longenecker CT, Mackey RH, Matsushita K, Mozaffarian D, Mussolino ME, Nasir K, Neumar RW, Palaniappan L, Pandey DK, Thiagarajan RR, Reeves MJ, Ritchey M, Rodriguez CJ, Roth GA, Rosamond WD, Sasson C, Towfighi A, Tsao CW, Turner MB, Virani SS, Voeks JH, Willey JZ, Wilkins JT, Wu JH, Alger HM, Wong SS, Muntner P; American Heart Association Statistics Committee and Stroke Statistics Subcommittee. Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics-2017 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association. Circulation. 2017 Mar 7;135(10):e146-e603. doi: 10.1161/CIR.0000000000000485. Epub 2017 Jan 25. No abstract available.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
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Reference Type BACKGROUND
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Sarfo FS, Mobula LM, Burnham G, Ansong D, Plange-Rhule J, Sarfo-Kantanka O, Ofori-Adjei D. Factors associated with uncontrolled blood pressure among Ghanaians: Evidence from a multicenter hospital-based study. PLoS One. 2018 Mar 19;13(3):e0193494. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193494. eCollection 2018.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
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Commodore-Mensah Y, Samuel LJ, Dennison-Himmelfarb CR, Agyemang C. Hypertension and overweight/obesity in Ghanaians and Nigerians living in West Africa and industrialized countries: a systematic review. J Hypertens. 2014 Mar;32(3):464-72. doi: 10.1097/HJH.0000000000000061.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
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Stephenson J. Noncompliance may cause half of antihypertensive drug "failures". JAMA. 1999 Jul 28;282(4):313-4. doi: 10.1001/jama.282.4.313. No abstract available.

Reference Type BACKGROUND
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Ogedegbe G, Plange-Rhule J, Gyamfi J, Chaplin W, Ntim M, Apusiga K, Iwelunmor J, Awudzi KY, Quakyi KN, Mogaverro J, Khurshid K, Tayo B, Cooper R. Health insurance coverage with or without a nurse-led task shifting strategy for hypertension control: A pragmatic cluster randomized trial in Ghana. PLoS Med. 2018 May 1;15(5):e1002561. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1002561. eCollection 2018 May.

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Reference Type DERIVED
PMID: 36592818 (View on PubMed)

Related Links

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http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/42682/9241545992.pdf?sequence=1

World Health Organization(WHO). Chapter XIII: Hypertension in adherence to LongTerm therapies-evidence for action.

Other Identifiers

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IRB00218586

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id

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