Peijia Zha
Rutgers University, USA
Title: Utilizing a mobile health (mHealth) application to improve hypertension monitoring and self-management in an underserved community: A pilot study
Biography
Biography: Peijia Zha
Abstract
Statement of the Problem: Hypertension is the leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease and stroke. Monitoring and self-management are important components of effective chronic disease care and improving patient outcomes. With the rapid development of integration of mobile health technology (mHealth) into health care delivery services, mHealth intervention provides a great opportunity to improve the efficiency of chronic disease management. This study utilized a pilot study to assess the preliminary effectiveness of a mobile-based health intervention in an urban underserved community with a high incidence of hypertension. The study hypothesized that patients with hypertension would yield different outcomes because of the use of the mHealth application compared with patients who were not using the application.
Methodology: A six-month randomized controlled trial was utilized to examine blood pressure (BP) decline and BP maintenance with 32 participants assigned either to standard care (the standard follow-up group) and treatment or to the standard care plus mHealth (the mHealth group). Repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVA) were used to compare all baseline data and changes from the baseline to three months and six months.
Results: The preliminary results showed that the mHealth group’s mean systolic blood pressure is (on average) 6.1 mmHg lower than in the standard followed-up group (p=0.04) after six-month intervention. No significant differences were found in mean diastolic blood pressure (p=0.82) after the intervention. In addition, the results revealed no main effect for time (p=0.47).
Conclusion & Significance: The results of this study provide some support for the use of mHealth application to help hypertension monitoring and self-management. It demonstrates the feasibility of incorporating chronic disease monitoring and self-management into existing mHealth applications. In addition, this study can advance the understanding of mHealth interventions for underserved population and provides evidence to support the new health care delivery approach in underserved urban communities.