Symposium 4

Prof Tazeen Jafar
Professor, Health Services and Systems Research
Duke-NUS Medical School

Dr. Jafar is a tenured Professor in the Program of Health Services & Systems Research at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, Visiting Consultant, Renal Medicine, Singapore General Hospital, and Professor of Global Health Duke Global Health Institute, Durham USA.

Professor Jafar is globally renowned for leading large impactful multi-country trials including the COBRA-BPS (Control of Blood Pressure and Risk Attenuation – Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) study published in NEJM https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa1911965?url+_.

Prof Jafar is the recipient of the senior clinical scientist award from the Singapore National Medical Research Council and leads the innovative SingHypertension cluster RCT for improving the management of hypertension in Singapore polyclinics. She is also the theme PI on the A*STAR funded "Diabetes Clinic of the Future" program in Singapore.

Prof Jafar is a member of the MRC Applied Global Health Research Board and serves on several national and international research funding panels, and advisory committees of research and regulatory agencies.

Session:

Continuum & Community, 7 October 2022, 1415 - 1615hrs
Scaling-up Low Cost Solutions to Improve Hypertension Care Globally

High blood pressure (BP) is the leading global risk factor for preventable deaths. More than 1.4 billion people suffer from hypertension worldwide. BP control remains less than 30% in high-income countries and worse in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC), especially in rural areas leading to significant disparities in hypertension-related cardiovascular mortality. Several barriers to hypertension care have been identified at multiple (patients, physicians, and health systems) levels.

In this talk, I will share examples of innovative, models of hypertension care shown to be effective, cost-effective, and affordable solutions for controlling BP in both low-middle-income and high-income countries.

In particular, I will discuss the multi-country Control of Blood Pressure and Risk Reduction- Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka (COBRA-BPS) and the SingHypertension (Singapore) cluster randomized trials and implementation outcomes. By leveraging the existing health systems, multi-component interventions, such as COBRA-BPS and SingHypertension, can be adapted and rapidly scaled up in many countries at low cost and save millions of lives.

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