Walk Together: A Family-Based Intervention for Hypertension In African Americans

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT DESCRIPTION: Hypertension (HTN) is the largest causal factor of racial disparities in mortality between African Americans and Whites, and currently impacts more than half of African American adults. Despite the empirically-supported benefits of HTN self-management, too few African Americans achieve HTN control, in part due to lower adherence to behaviors like diet and exercise, compared to White patients. Barriers to self- management among African Americans include limited health knowledge, stress, and difficulty sustaining lifestyle changes. Family members make substantial contributions to HTN self-management in this population, however, family support is not leveraged by current HTN self-management interventions. Family-based self- management interventions that leverage patients’ family support networks have proven beneficial for other chronic conditions. Thus, there is a critical need for empirically-driven family-based interventions to improve the self-management of HTN for African American patients. The proposed study will develop a novel family-based HTN self-management intervention, Walk Together, adapted from an existing empirically-supported dyadic intervention, for implementation in primary care. Specifically, we will (1) develop an innovative intervention for HTN that integrates theoretically-driven research on family support effects on health outcomes, and community-based participatory cultural perspectives in the specifics of the intervention; and, (2) determine the feasibility, acceptability, and safety of the Walk Together intervention. The proposed family-based intervention will be the first to target the HTN self-management behaviors of African Americans via incorporating family members in both intervention design and directly in the intervention. Results of this study will provide critical information to move us closer to determining the impact of Walk Together on HTN control, and toward scalability for the proposed protocol.