NCT03292393

Social Norms and Antihypertensive Medication Adherence

• Status: Withdrawn
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 0 (actual)
• Sponsor: Florida International University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 35 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The study objective is to build group social norms to improve individual adhere to antihypertensive medications. Financial incentives are provided to individuals contingent upon group behavioral changes. Groups of patients will be formed, and incentivized to interact on a daily basis through social media and participate in a monthly-facilitated meeting at a local clinic. By forming groups, making individual outcomes transparent, and setting financial incentives contingent to group targets, individual decisions are framed within emerging social norms.

Detailed description

We propose a pilot study that will inform, provide inputs and reduce the risk of a larger implementation. The project consists of three phases: The pre-intervention phase, the intervention phase, and the post-intervention phase. The pre-intervention phase includes the recruitment and selection of participants, and a one-month collection of baseline blood pressure and medication adherence levels of participants before they are assigned to a treatment arm. All participants will receive compensation for participation. In the intervention phase participants will be randomly assigned to one of the three treatment arms and they will receive the financial incentive that corresponds to their treatment arm. Data will be collected for four months and all participants will continue receiving a compensation for participation. During the post-intervention phase, contingency payments will be cut off, and only compensation for participation will remain. Data will be collected for three months in the post-intervention phase. The primary outcome of the study is medication adherence which will be measured using two different methods. The first method is through the use of eCaps (electronic caps). The second method is through a monthly randomized phone call during which the participant will be asked to perform a pill count of their medication. The secondary outcome of the study is blood pressure which will be measured using two different instruments . The first instrument will be the ambulatory blood pressure monitor (ABPM). The second instrument will be a home blood pressure monitor (HBPM) which researchers will provide to the participant to use for the duration of the study. All participants of the study will receive an unconditional payment each time they provide a blood pressure reading from the ABPM. Financial incentives (contingent to change in behavior -conditional to change in adherence). In addition to the unconditional payment, participants in the ICM and GCM treatment arms will receive a financial incentive that is conditional to medication adherence.

Conditions

• Hypertension
• Medication Adherence

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Financial reward	In contingency management, financial rewards are contingent upon an individual changing behavior. In our study, financial incentives are contingent upon group behavioral changes.. In the intervention phase participants will be randomly assigned to one of the three treatment arms and they will receive the financial incentive that corresponds to their treatment arm. Data will be collected for four months and all participants will continue receiving a compensation for participation
BEHAVIORAL	Social norms	To build social norms the study adds a group component to a contingency management model. In contingency management, financial rewards are contingent upon an individual changing behavior. Social norms are expected to emerge as a result of the designed group contingency management, monthly-facilitated meetings at a local clinic, and daily basis interaction through social media. The intervention will build social norms that improve medication adherence of each member of a group. A three-arm randomize trial is designed to test this hypothesis. Hypertensive patients will be randomly assigned to a group contingency management (GCM) arm, an individual contingency management (ICG) arm, or a control arm.
DEVICE	Home Blood Pressure Monitoring	Participants will be reminded that they will receive and learn how to use a Home Blood Pressure Monitor (HBPM) device that participant will keep for the duration of the study
DEVICE	Medication adherence assessment	Participants will be informed that they will receive and learn how to use eCap, a medication event monitoring system that participants will return after completing the study. The project nursing student will count the number of pills the participant currently has and make a record of it on the Data Collection form.The participant will provide the project nursing student with his/her antihypertension prescription records so that the dosage amount and number of pills can be recorded on the Data Collection form.

Timeline

• Start date: 2018-09-01
• Primary completion: 2019-09-01
• Completion: 2020-03-01
• First posted: 2017-09-25
• Last updated: 2018-11-07