African-American men who participated in an intervention program across barbershops had helped significantly in improving their blood pressure levels.

‘The barbershop-based health programs like these could save many peoples’ lives by helping them lower their blood pressure.’

After six months, the intervention group continued the program, but had fewer in-person pharmacist visits to test if the intervention effect could be sustained safely for one year while reducing pharmacist travel time to and from barbershops. 




When the study began, participants had an average systolic blood pressure of 152.4 mm Hg in the intervention group and 154.6 mm Hg in the control group. Systolic blood pressure is the top number in a blood pressure reading and it measures the pressure the blood exerts against the arteries while the heart is pumping.
At 12 months, the average systolic blood pressure fell by 28.6 mm Hg (to 123.8 mm Hg) in the intervention group and by 7.2 mm Hg (to 147.4 mm Hg) in the control group. The average reduction was 20.8 mm Hg greater with the intervention. These results are indistinguishable from the previously reported 6-month data, which were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The principal investigator for the study was the late Ronald G. Victor, M.D., associate director of the Smidt Heart Institute. In 2010, Victor became the first to prove, through randomized, controlled testing, that barbershop-based health programs could potentially save hundreds of lives annually by helping African American men lower their blood pressure.
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