Barbershops could play a significant role in decreasing blood pressures in black men, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Monday.
According to the CDC, non-Hispanic black people develop high blood pressure more often and at an earlier age than whites and Hispanics. A normal blood pressure reading is less than 120 systolic and 80 diastolic or 120/80 mm Hg, the CDC website states.
The study tested whether pharmacy-led programs in barbershops could lower high blood pressures in African-American men. To conduct the study, researchers enrolled 319 black male patrons, aged 35 to 79, from 52 black-owned barbershops across Los Angeles County with a systolic blood pressure reading of 140 mm Hg or more. They held two separate studies: one in which barbers encouraged meetings with specially-trained pharmacists who prescribed drug therapy and another in which barbers encouraged lifestyle modifications and doctor appointments.
The results revealed that 63.3 percent of the men in the pharmacy-led program achieved a blood pressure level of less than 130/80 mm Hg in six months versus 11.7 percent of men who achieved that level in the other study.
Ciantel Blyler, a clinical pharmacist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and co-author of the study, told CNN that she was "surprised" by the results.
"To a certain extent, I was surprised by the magnitude of the effect of the intervention," she said. "Especially once we sat down and looked at the blood pressure control rates and we were comparing the intervention group and the control group, I was sort of taken aback."
As CNN reported, Dr. Joseph Ravenell, an internist at NYU Langone Health, and his colleagues previously researched how barbershops and other community-based strategies could help diagnose and treat hypertension and colorectal cancer.
Ravenell told CNN that places like barbershops are important considering the distrust many African-Americans have toward the health care system.
"Medical mistrust has been an important barrier to African-Americans seeking health care, and so the barbershop — where men go on a monthly basis and have an opportunity to develop a rapport with a trusted key opinion leader in the community — that rapport is a perfect foundation for talking about health," he said.
The CDC lists the following ways a healthy lifestyle can keep your blood pressure at a healthy level: a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight, getting enough physical activity, not smoking and limiting alcohol use.
