Barbershops good place for a trim, blood pressure check

Black Americans have one of the highest rates of high blood pressure in the world. The consequences are devastating: premature death and disability from heart attacks, stroke and, especially, kidney disease.

Health officials have used churches as sites for blood pressure programs, but that means missing a lot of black men because they're less likely to be regular churchgoers than black women.

So some researchers turned to another important institution in the black community, one that attracts plenty of male customers: the neighborhood barbershop.

In the May issue of Hypertension, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center described two pilot studies of barbershop-based blood pressure programs. In one, research assistants and students supervised by a nurse gave customers "BP report cards" that included blood pressure readings, feedback about the importance of blood pressure control and "role model stories." Half-price haircuts ($6 instead of $12) were offered as an incentive to stick with the program. The comparison group got the blood pressure readings and brochures about high blood pressure among black Americans.

In the other study, barbers in one of the shops in the first study were put in charge of the BP report cards, which included checking their customers' blood pressure when they came in for a haircut. As an incentive, they were paid $3 for each recorded blood pressure reading and $50 for each report card signed by a medical provider and returned with proof of a new blood pressure prescription.

The results were encouraging. In the first study, the blood pressure of the men who received the report card fell considerably over an eight-month period (a 16-point drop in systolic pressure and a 9-point drop in diastolic) while it didn't change in the comparison group. In the second study, the barbers measured and recorded almost 9,000 blood pressure readings in the course of giving 11,000 haircuts, and about 100 of their customers with high blood pressure were starting to get the problem under control.

These were preliminary studies, designed only to test the waters. Still, it makes sense to bring health screening and promotion programs to where people congregate and fraternize, rather than waiting for them to go to a doctor's office or clinic. The barbershop may be the ideal place for tackling one of the country's most preventable health problems.