---
type: source
title: "Digital Health Interventions for Hypertension Management in US Health Disparity Populations: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis"
author: "JAMA Network Open (multiple authors)"
url: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2815070
date: 2024-02-05
domain: health
secondary_domains: []
format: article
status: unprocessed
priority: high
tags: [hypertension, digital-health, health-disparities, blood-pressure, remote-patient-monitoring, equity, meta-analysis]
---

## Content

Published February 5, 2024 in JAMA Network Open (Volume 7, Issue 2, e2356070).

**Study design:** Systematic review and meta-analysis characterizing digital health interventions for reducing hypertension in populations experiencing health disparities.

**Scope:** Systematic search of Cochrane Library, Ovid Embase, Google Scholar, Ovid MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science from inception to October 30, 2023. Final inclusion: **28 studies, 8,257 patients**.

**Key finding:** BP reductions were significantly greater in intervention groups compared with standard care groups in disparity populations. Meta-analysis found clinically significant reductions in systolic blood pressure at both **6 months** and **12 months** for digital health intervention recipients vs. controls.

**Population specifics:** Studies focused on populations experiencing health disparities — racial/ethnic minorities, low-income adults, underinsured or uninsured.

**Critical qualifier:** The interventions that worked were **tailored** initiatives designed specifically for disparity populations. The review characterizes "tailored initiatives that leverage digital health" as having "potential to advance equity in hypertension outcomes" — not generic deployment.

**Companion finding (separate AJMC coverage):** "Digital Health Interventions Can Reduce Hypertension Among Disadvantaged Populations" — framing suggests this is a conditional possibility, not demonstrated at scale.

**Limitations not in abstract:** No comment in available abstracts on whether any studies achieved **population-level** BP control (rather than within-trial BP reduction). RCT settings with tailored protocols differ substantially from real-world generic app/wearable deployment.

## Agent Notes

**Why this matters:** Directly tests the disconfirmation target for this session — can digital health close the 76.6% non-control gap in hypertension? Answer: YES, under tailored conditions, with significant BP reduction at 12 months. This is the strongest evidence that digital health is not categorically excluded from reaching disparity populations.

**What surprised me:** The effect persists at 12 months (not just short-term). Most digital health RCTs show effect decay; this finding is more durable than I expected.

**What I expected but didn't find:** Evidence of population-scale deployment with BP control outcomes (not just within-trial improvements). The 28 studies represent tailored research programs, not commercial product deployments. The gap between "tailored intervention works in an RCT" and "generic wearable deployment improves BP control at population scale" remains unbridged.

**KB connections:**
- `only-23-percent-of-treated-us-hypertensives-achieve-blood-pressure-control-demonstrating-pharmacological-availability-is-not-the-binding-constraint.md` — this is the "what's failing" claim; this source shows digital health can work within it
- `hypertension-related-cvd-mortality-doubled-2000-2023-despite-available-treatment-indicating-behavioral-sdoh-failure.md` — directly relevant
- `rpm-technology-stack-enables-facility-to-home-care-migration-through-ai-middleware-that-converts-continuous-data-into-clinical-utility.md` — technology layer exists; question is equity of access
- `continuous health monitoring is converging on a multi-layer sensor stack...` — sensor stack exists; this source tests whether it reaches who needs it

**Extraction hints:**
- New claim: "Tailored digital health interventions achieve clinically significant systolic BP reductions at 12 months in US populations experiencing health disparities, but the effect is conditional on design specificity for these populations rather than generic deployment"
- Key nuance: "tailored" vs. generic — this is the equity split that generic deployment papers will contradict

**Context:** Published in 2024 before FDA TEMPO pilot and CMS ACCESS model were announced (Dec 2025). The infrastructure for deployment is newer than this evidence base.

## Curator Notes

PRIMARY CONNECTION: `only-23-percent-of-treated-us-hypertensives-achieve-blood-pressure-control-demonstrating-pharmacological-availability-is-not-the-binding-constraint.md`

WHY ARCHIVED: Provides conditional optimism that digital health can reach disparity populations — but the "tailored" qualifier is critical and unresolved by current commercial deployment scale

EXTRACTION HINT: Extract as a claim with explicit scope: "tailored digital health interventions" (not generic wearable deployment). The tailoring qualifier prevents overgeneralization. Pair with the equity-widening source (PMC 2024) to create a divergence or a scoped claim set.
