Arbor Research Collaborative for Health is pleased to partner with JSI on a new Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) initiative designed to strengthen hypertension care through expanded use of self-measured blood pressure (SMBP) monitoring in community health centers.

The initiative will support 30–50 HRSA-funded health centers as they work to integrate SMBP into routine clinical care, strengthen patient engagement, and develop sustainable approaches to improving blood pressure control.

JSI is leading the initiative, with Arbor Research playing a central role in data collection, performance monitoring, and evaluation.

Turning SMBP implementation into actionable learning

Self-measured blood pressure monitoring gives patients an important role in understanding and managing their blood pressure outside of the traditional clinical setting. When effectively integrated into care, SMBP can provide clinicians with more meaningful information, support patient engagement, and strengthen hypertension management.

But successful implementation involves more than distributing blood pressure monitors.

Health centers must determine how SMBP fits within clinical workflows, how patients and care teams use the information, which approaches work best in different settings, and how improvements can be sustained over time.

That is where evaluation becomes an essential part of implementation.

Arbor Research will lead two major components of the initiative:

• Data collection and performance monitoring, including systems for tracking implementation and project performance; and
• A mixed-methods evaluation, incorporating an evaluation plan, health-center interviews, surveys, and tracking of outcomes and progress along the SMBP implementation continuum.

Arbor Research will also lead development of a microsite and contribute to other components of the initiative, including health-center recruitment, developing a project screening tool and toolkit, technical assistance, dissemination, and sustainability planning.

Together, these activities will help the project understand not only whether participating health centers make progress, but how they make progress, what barriers and facilitators they encounter, and which lessons may be useful to other organizations seeking to strengthen hypertension care.

Building on decades of kidney disease and chronic disease research

The work builds on Arbor Research’s longstanding focus on kidney disease, cardiovascular risk, health care quality, and the evaluation of complex health care interventions.

For more than 25 years, Arbor Research has conducted major studies and federal programs related to chronic kidney disease (CKD), end-stage renal disease (ESRD), dialysis, transplantation, and health care delivery.

Arbor Research supports ongoing Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) work related to the ESRD Quality Incentive Program, dialysis data reporting, and evaluations of kidney-focused payment and care-delivery models, including CMS’s End-Stage Renal Disease Treatment Choices and Kidney Care Choices models. Arbor Research also works with HRSA on organ transplantation policy and research, including transplant and organ procurement organization data reporting. That work builds on Arbor Research’s earlier stewardship of the United States Renal Data System (USRDS), the national surveillance system for CKD and ESRD, during two separate periods.

That combination of clinical subject-matter expertise and mixed-methods evaluation experience will inform Arbor Research’s work on the new SMBP initiative.

Understanding what works across diverse health centers

Community health centers serve patients and communities with widely varying needs, resources, staffing models, workflows, and local circumstances. An approach that works well in one setting may require adaptation in another.

The evaluation therefore provides an opportunity to learn across participating organizations while recognizing those differences.

Arbor Research’s team will use quantitative and qualitative information to examine implementation over time, understand health-center experiences, and identify patterns that can help explain differences in progress and outcomes.

“Effective evaluation can help us move beyond asking whether an intervention worked to understanding how it worked, for whom, and under what circumstances,” said Rebecca Mandell, PhD, of Arbor Research. “Those are the lessons that can ultimately make findings useful beyond the organizations participating in the project.”

The ultimate value of this initiative lies in the lessons it generates for sustaining hypertension care improvements over time. For Arbor Research, the project reflects a core part of our mission: producing rigorous evidence that translates into better health care and better outcomes.

Learn more about the initiative and JSI’s work supporting participating health centers.