Please read Dr. Heinert’s article in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science titled, “Comparing emergency department versus high school-based recruitment for a hypertension research study with adult-youth dyads.“
Inclusion of a support person in behavioral interventions for chronic illness has shown to be more impactful than usual medical care or intervention involving only the patient. However, dyads can be challenging to recruit for research studies because both people must meet eligibility criteria and be willing to participate. Behavioral intervention trials involving patients and a support person rarely report strategies employed to recruit support persons in the study. Additionally, much of the literature that presents methodological reflection on the recruitment of dyads for health-related research has been composed of two adults (one patient and one support person) or one younger child and an adult and not adolescent-adult dyads. Hypertension (HTN) affects a large portion of the population, and uncontrolled HTN is especially prevalent for underserved groups. A youth-led HTN education intervention can warrant benefits to both hypertensive adults and youth themselves. For adults, a lack of HTN knowledge is a common barrier to HTN control, while social support is a strong facilitator. Youth have shown increased self-confidence when given the responsibility to provide health education and care navigation to others and can also expand their own knowledge and increase their healthful decision-making capacity]. As such, we planned a RCT of adults with HTN who present to the emergency department (ED) and youth (15–18 years) with whom they live (adult–youth dyads) to measure the effectiveness of a youth-led digital HTN education intervention to improve adult blood pressure (BP) and adult and youth HTN knowledge. We targeted adults in the ED because the underserved populations seen disproportionately in the ED tend to have higher rates of uncontrolled BP. To read the full article.
Comparing emergency department versus high school-based recruitment for a hypertension research study with adult-youth dyads. Heinert SW, Salvatore R, Thompson KM, Krishna D, Pena K, Ohman-Strickland P, Greene K, Heckman CJ, Crabtree BF, Levy P, Hudson SV. J Clin Transl Sci. 2024 Sep 16;8(1):e122. PMID: 39351500 PMCID: PMC11440580 DOI: 1017/cts.2024.586