Matão Controlling Hypertension (MatCH) project: Rationale and design

Abstract

BackgroundHypertension is the main risk factor for most cardiovascular diseases. A coordinated and organized system from the Brazilian Ministry of Healthy involving Family Health Strategy (FHS), a program for the prevention of chronic disease, and the Popular Pharmacy Program (PPP), which subsidizes medications for the population, could allow an earlier identification and better blood pressure (BP) control. Matão Controlling Hypertension (MatCH) is a community-based population project that aims to apply an organized, integrated and coordinated program in the city of Matão, Brazil, involving FHS and PPP in order to actively search, treat and follow-up hypertensive subjects.MethodThis is a population community-based, interventional, follow-up study where all subjects aged ≥ 40 years assisted by the FHS program in Matão will have BP assessed monthly by trained Community Health Agents (CHA) during a domiciliary visit. Identified hypertensive subjects will be referred to FHS physicians for nonpharmacological and pharmacological treatment. Most of the hypertensive drugs used will be available through the PPP. Prevalence of hypertension, awareness, demographics and risk factors will be correlated with BP control. The population study is expected to involve approximately 18.600 subjects. The study period will be four years.DiscussionConsidering that hypertension is asymptomatic in most cases, to reduce the population burden of BP-related deaths and diseases it is essential to detect and treat early all hypertensive patients. If we achieve our large-scale BP control, this program can be applied to other populations from developing countries.

Effectiveness of a community‐based health programme on the blood pressure control, adherence and knowledge of adults with hypertension: A PRECEDE‐PROCEED model approach

“…These results are consistent with those of other communitybased health intervention studies, showing marked improvement in blood pressure regulation after the programme (Lu et al, 2015;Wu et al, 2012). These assertions further confirm that an individualised and comprehensive community-based health programme is effective in improving blood pressure control (Chang et al, 2017;Minelli et al, 2017;Park et al, 2011), especially through the adherence to treatment medications and lifestyle modifications (Lu et al, 2015).…”

“…These results are consistent with those of other community‐based health intervention studies, showing marked improvement in blood pressure regulation after the programme (Lu et al, ; Wu et al, ). These assertions further confirm that an individualised and comprehensive community‐based health programme is effective in improving blood pressure control (Chang et al, ; Minelli et al, ; Park et al, ), especially through the adherence to treatment medications and lifestyle modifications (Lu et al, ). Although individualised and comprehensive health programmes have been advocated to improve blood pressure control, little research and efforts have been made among adults in the community setting (Bosworth et al, ; Fahey et al, ), particularly on lifestyle modification and information about hypertension and its management (Ghembaza, Senoussaoui, Tani, & Meguenni, ; Landram & Collier, ; Misra, Salve, Srivastava, Kant, & Krishnan, ; Thankappan et al, ).…”