The Effects of a Home Visit and Telephone Follow-up Program on Blood Pressure, Health Behaviors, and Health Beliefs among Community-Dwelling Patients with Hypertension

Abstract

The quasi-experimental study with a one-group pretest-posttest design aimed to evaluate the effects of a home visit program combined with telephone follow-up on blood pressure levels, health behaviors, and health beliefs among patients with hypertension in a community in Thawi Watthana district, Bangkok.  The study included 30 participants diagnosed with hypertension and receiving pharmacological treatment. The intervention was implemented over a 12-week period. Research instruments included the home visit and telephone follow-up program, blood pressure monitoring device, health belief questionnaire, and health behavior questionnaire developed based on the Health Belief Model concept. The instruments demonstrated content validity of 0.95 and 0.93, with Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.71 and 0.72, respectively. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and t-test.

The results showed that mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure significantly decreased after the intervention, from 138.60 to 134.47 mmHg (p < .001) and from 83.5 to 80.4 mmHg (p = .007), respectively. Mean scores of health belief and health behaviors significantly increased after the intervention, from 79.87 to 84.73 scores, and from 44.53 to 48.73 scores, respectively (p < .001). These findings indicate that home visit programs combined with telephone follow-up are effective in enhancing health beliefs and health behaviors, thereby improving blood pressure control among patients with hypertension. Such interventions may play an important role in reducing the risk of stroke, a major complication of hypertension, in community settings.