This month, The British Medical Journal published a paper by members of the 2017 Emerging Leaders cohort, which includes Karla Santo, Godsent C Isiguzo, Emily Atkins, Shiva R Mishra, Rajmohan Panda, Lilian Mbau, Augustine Odili and Salim Virani. The published study, entitled ‘Adapting a club-based medication delivery strategy to a hypertension context: the CLUBMEDS Study in Nigeria’, seeks to evaluate the feasibility and impact of adherence clubs to improve hypertension control in Nigeria.
The prevalence of hypertension in sub-Saharan Africa is among the world’s highest; however, awareness, treatment, and control of hypertension in this region are suboptimal. Among other barriers, the overburdened healthcare system poses a great challenge for hypertension control. Community peer-support groups are an alternative and promising strategy to improve adherence and blood pressure (BP) control.
This paper is a product of the CLUBMEDS project, which was also supported by research assistants Samuel B Fayomi and Collins Ugwu.
