The impact of educational intervention on self-care behaviors in overweight hypertensive women: A randomized control trial

BACKGROUND: The improper control of self-care in hypertension imposes a lot of financial burden on the health-care system. On the other hand, the importance of participatory care and high effectiveness of self-management programs have been confirmed. This study was aimed to examine the effect of an educational intervention on self-efficacy, self-care behaviors and blood pressure (BP) of hypertensive obese or overweight women in the primary health-care setting in Isfahan, Iran. METHODS: This randomized controlled trial was an educational intervention program. It was performed among 146 hypertensive women of 30-65 age range who referred to 6 health care centers of Isfahan that randomly assigned to a control and intervention groups. The interventional group participated in the 6 weekly sessions including exercises, weight control, medication adherence, and home self-monitoring based on goal setting, and promotion of self-efficacy. The control group received routine care from health-care center and any special intervention has been done for the control group. Output variables were analyzed after intervention, and 6-month follow-up. RESULTS: There are no significant differences between age, weight, body mass index and BP and biochemical variables except lipids as well as behavioral factors at the baseline. After 6 months intervention self-efficacy (< 0.001) and physical activity (< 0.001) improvement of in the intervention group was significantly different in comparison with the control group. After 6 months, there was a significant reduction in systolic (P < 0.001) and diastolic BP (P = 0.010) in the intervention group. CONCLUSION: Participatory method of education could help us to convince patients to have better self-care to control disease. Furthermore, since adherence to the treatment of hypertensive patients in our society is low, organizing such courses can teach essential knowledge and skills to lifestyle change and prevention of complications. Performing these courses is recommended for other chronic disease patients in health-care centers to assess self-management programs on self-care behavior.