Improving Community Stroke Preparedness in the HHS (Hip-Hop Stroke) Randomized Clinical Trial [Clinical Sciences]

Background and Purpose—Deficiencies in stroke preparedness cause major delays to stroke thrombolysis, particularly among economically disadvantaged minorities. We evaluated the effectiveness of a stroke preparedness intervention delivered to preadolescent urban public school children on the stroke knowledge/preparedness of their parents.Methods—We recruited 3070 fourth through sixth graders and 1144 parents from 22 schools into a cluster randomized trial with schools randomized to the HHS (Hip-Hop Stroke) intervention or attentional control (nutrition classes). HHS is a 3-hour culturally tailored, theory-based, multimedia stroke literacy intervention targeting school children, which systematically empowers children to share stroke information with parents. Our main outcome measures were stroke knowledge/preparedness of children and parents using validated surrogates.Results—Among children, it was estimated that 1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 0%–1%) of controls and 2% (95% CI, 1%–4%; P=0.09) of the intervention group demonstrated optimal stroke preparedness (perfect scores on the knowledge/preparedness test) at baseline, increasing to 57% (95% CI, 44%–69%) immediately after the program in the intervention group compared with 1% (95% CI, 0%–1%; P
Source: Stroke - Category: Neurology Authors: Tags: Primary Prevention, Risk Factors, Cerebrovascular Disease/Stroke, Ischemic Stroke, Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA) Original Contributions Source Type: research