Opportunity
One in three Australian adults (34%) have high blood pressure (BP), contributing to over 21,000 deaths and costing Australia more than $1.2 billion annually. Despite the availability of effective treatments and preventive strategies, BP control in Australia remains below that achieved in other countries. The burden of uncontrolled BP falls disproportionately on the most vulnerable populations, in our community, including older adults, women, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, who are often underserved by the health system and at elevated risk of cardiovascular morbidity. Innovative, scalable, and culturally responsive interventions are urgently needed to improve BP control and reduce disparities.
Behaviour change in BP management is complex and influenced by social, cultural, and psychological factors. Peer-led interventions, especially those using personal narratives, have shown promise in improving engagement and reducing stigma in other health contexts. Short videos, widely used on social and mainstream media, are powerful tools for shaping behaviour, sparking trends, and building community. However, despite their potential, peer-led video interventions remain critically under-evaluated in cardiovascular care, leaving a gap in scalable, culturally responsive strategies to improving BP management.
BP-CLIPS (Community-Led Insights for blood Pressure Support) seeks to address this gap by delivering short videos via SMS to promote behaviours known to lower BP, including healthy eating, physical activity, smoking cessation, stress management, and medication review. The videos are co-created with consumers with lived experience of high BP, and are categorised by age, gender, and cultural background to support more personalised delivery.
Project Objectives
To evaluate the effect of BP-CLIPS, a peer-led video intervention developed in collaboration with the Media Lab at University of Sydney and delivered via SMS, designed to promote behaviours that lower BP, on systolic BP among adults with uncontrolled hypertension.
