Improving primary prevention of hypertension using a social networking site

Abstract

Abstract Purpose To determine the most effective methods of informing people about the primary prevention of hypertension using a social networking site. Materials and methods It was a randomized, prospective, two-stage study conducted on a social networking site (i.e., the Instagram platform). At Stage 1 online school was announced, and 945 applicants were registered for the training. The online training programme had the following modes: risk factors for cardiovascular diseases, diet, cholesterol, physical activity, obesity, smoking, hypertension and myocardial infarction. At Stage 2 a total of 125 participants were randomly selected and assigned into one of the four training groups where medical training materials were represented by texts of up to 4,000 characters (n=31), short video clips of up to 5 minutes (n=31), by text publications followed by video clips (n=33) and by video clips followed by text publications (n=30) in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th accounts, respectively. Before and after training participants in all the four groups completed the Heart Disease Knowledge Questionnaire (HDKQ). The study was approved by the Ethics Committee. Results The total number of people who listened to and read the materials of the online school was 2,108 people; the overall engagement was 1,598 people. The average percentage viewed was 22%. The online school audience was mostly female (84%), with a mean age of 45.9±12.3 years.The mean duration of hypertension was 6.1±7.6 years. Before training the number of correct responses for 29 HDKQ statements was 18.4±5.1 (CI, 17.5; 19.4), with no significant differences between the groups. After training the number of correct responses increased to 21.9±3.9 (CI, 21; 22.7) (P(ANOVA) <0.0001).The post-hoc analysis showed that after training the respondents from Group 3 gave the lowest number of correct responses compared to Groups 1 and 2, i.e. Δ=4.9 (CI, −7.8; 2.0) and Δ=3.7 (CI, −6.5; −0.8), respectively. Participants from Group 4 had more correct responses than the respondents in Group 3, i.e. Δ=5.2 (CI, 2.2; 8.1). The regression analysis showed that the post-training number of correct responses in Group 4 increased on average by 3.9 compared to Group 3 (β=3.94, P=0.04 (CI, 0.21; 7.66). In the study there was a significant association between the duration of hypertension and the number of correct responses both before and after training (β=0.20, P=0.007 (CI, 0.06; 0.34) and β=0.16, P=0.005 (CI, 0.05; 0.27), respectively). Conclusions In all the 4 groups there was a tendency to increase in the number of correct responses after training, but among the training modes the most effective method of informing people about the primary prevention of hypertension using a social networking site corresponded to the following sequence: a video clip of up to 5 minutes followed by a text publication of up to 4,000 characters. The results of this study can be used in planning online training programmes for the primary prevention of hypertension. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.