UAB Study: Peer Coaching Among Young Black Adults Can Lower Blood Pressure

By Anna Jones | UAB News A study recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine involving researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham found that peer coaching is more effective than traditional clinical care in controlling high blood pressure among young Black individuals living in the Southeastern region of the United States. The results show that, for Black individuals under age 60 who have persistently uncontrolled hypertension, the benefits of working with a peer health coach were equivalent to what would be expected from taking a low dose of blood pressure medication. In rural areas across the Southeast with longstanding primary care shortages, more than half of Black adults have hypertension, which can result in higher rates of cardiovascular disease and kidney failure and shortened life expectancy. Travel distance and costs associated with traveling to primary care clinics make regular physician visits difficult. Knowing this, researchers at UAB collaborated with Weill Cornell Medicine, New York-Presbyterian, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and East Carolina University to determine effective strategies to overcome these barriers and improve outcomes for Black individuals living with hypertension in these areas. “Almost half of all adults in Alabama have hypertension, and those rates are...