Effect of Peer Mentoring and Blood Pressure Self-monitoring on Hypertension Control.

Cardiovascular diseases are increasing throughout the developing world and are the cause of almost 16.7 million deaths each year, of which 80% occur in low and middle-income countries. As more than three fourth of the global burden of cardiometabolic diseases are related to risk factors connected with lifestyles or behaviors, such as smoking, unhealthy eating, low physical activity, and harmful consumption of alcohol. This burden could be dramatically reduced by changing individual behaviors. This study is focused on interventions that are aimed to improve the adherence to treatment in cardiovascular disease (hypertension), based on a Behavioral Economics approach. Most of public policies targeted to tackle Noncommunicable diseases utilize a rational economic model of behavior.

Behavioral economics, by using insights from cognitive psychology and other social sciences, has drawn a lot of attention for its potential to increase healthy behaviors. Interventions informed by Behavioral economics principles seek to rearrange the social or physical environment in such a way to 'nudge' people towards healthier choices and behaviors. This is an individual controlled randomized trial which will be conducted to assess whether the implementation of two strategies, blood pressure self-monitoring plus signing a "contract of commitment", and peer mentoring are effective to reduce blood pressure values over a period of 3 months, compared to usual care. This randomized trial will enroll 430 patients from 10 public primary care clinics in Argentina.