Peer and Health Educator Support to Improve Health
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University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia County
Hypertension
University-affiliated primary care practices
African Americans |
PROJECT
Patients receive complementary disease management support from a health educator and peer coach.
This practice-based peer coach and health educator intervention addresses patient cardiovascular disease risk with five monthly contacts; three calls by a peer coach alternating with two clinic visits with a health educator.
The peer coach serves as a role model who provides convenient phone support about the patient’s self-reported barriers while the health educator offers face-to-face information tailored to the patient’s blood pressure, lipids and other cardiovascular disease risk factors. The peer coach and health educator focus on medication adherence, exercise and diet by addressing attitudes, social norms and perceived behavioral control. The health educator and peer coach concurrently monitor patient progress as part of a team-based care model.
Patients also receive American Heart Association brochures and community resources about hypertension and diet that are were developed for African American patients with low literacy.
RATIONALE
Care from a primary care physician alone may not always meet the broad range of patient needs. Team-based care as part of a patient-centered medical home model has been conceptualized to offer comprehensive care that is accessible, family-centered, continuous, coordinated, compassionate and culturally competent. Adding a trained peer coach and health educator to the care team may help address the barriers to a healthy lifestyle and medication adherence that patients may
experience. Several decades of research have shown that peers can be trained to deliver credible, effective messages about health behaviors because they are viewed as successful despite having similar challenges.
EVALUATION PLAN
Funded by Finding Answers in 2008.
Patients are being randomly assigned to the intervention or control group in a single-blind randomized controlled trial. Patients in the control group are receiving care as usual, along with brochures and community resources from the American Heart Association about hypertension and diet.
Clinical outcome measures include coronary artery disease risk factors and systolic blood pressure. Patients and peer educators are also completing satisfaction surveys to inform and improve future efforts. Additionally, the evaluation is measuring the direct costs of the intervention to inform other health care practices considering a similar program.
Principal Investigators:
- Barbara J. Turner, MD, MSED
- Mark Weiner, MD
- Susan Day, MD
For More Information
Please Contact:
Kavita Pandit
kavita.p.pandit@gmail.com |
