Black men have less physician contact than other groups and thus lower rates of hypertension
treatment and control. In the Barber-Assisted Reduction in Blood Pressure among
Ethnic Residents trial, hypertension control in 8 active-intervention barbershops where
barbers offered blood pressure (BP) checks with haircuts and motivated black male patrons
with high BP to seek provider follow-up showed a small improvement over that in
7 comparison shops where patrons received hypertension pamphlets but not barber-BP
checks. Undertreatment of hypertension, which is common in primary care, may have
impacted the outcomes. Thus, in patrons with a baseline systolic BP of ‡140 mm Hg and
10-month follow-up including BP and medication data, we performed post hoc comparison
of systolic BP reduction between comparison-arm patrons (n [ 68) treated by primary care
providers (PCPs) with (1) intervention-arm patrons (n [ 37) treated by PCPs or (2)
intervention-arm patrons (n [ 33) who lacked access to PCPs and were treated by
hypertension specialist physicians serving as safety net providers. The latter group had
higher baseline systolic BP than the others (162 – 3 vs 155 – 2 and 154 – 2 mm Hg,
respectively, p