Welcome to the CHARMED Study!

Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a major health problem affecting more than 119 million people in the United States. Although we know how to effectively treat hypertension, not all patients and health systems have access to or can use such treatments. It is important to understand how to implement effective treatments for hypertension across a wide range of settings serving diverse patients.  

Study Overview 

Our study, CHARMED (Championing Hypertension Remote Monitoring for Equity and Dissemination), looks at new ways to help people check their blood pressure at home. We'll try out different methods for patients to use home blood pressure monitors and provide various types of training and support to healthcare teams, including nurses, pharmacists, medical assistants, and doctors, to better manage high blood pressure. This approach allows us to explore multiple strategies at once. We hope to find the best ways to start, maintain, and expand home blood pressure monitoring for many different types of patients. 

This research aims to benefit both people with high blood pressure and healthcare systems interested in remote blood pressure monitoring. Our findings should be especially helpful for those who face challenges using blood pressure monitors like people with limited English proficiency, as we will test different ways of self-managing and reaching out to these patients. We also hope to assist healthcare systems that struggle with monitoring patient care between visits, especially those that are short-staffed, by finding better ways to manage their workflows for hypertension care. 

We will recruit 2,500 adults with high blood pressure in this study by working with 25 primary care clinics at three large safety-net health systems:

 Contra Costa Health Services    San Francisco Health Network    Ventura County Health Care Agency

How do I get involved? 

Patients Website in English

Sitio Web en Español Para Pacientes

Clinician Resource Website

 

Study Team

Co-Principal Investigators

 

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 Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH – UCSF 

 

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Courtney Lyles, PhD – UC Davis  

 

 Co-Investigators

 

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 Elaine Khoong, MD, MS – UCSF 

 

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Mark Pletcher, MD, MPH – UCSF  

 

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Anjana Sharma, MD, MAS – UCSF  

 

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 Fan Xia, PhD – UCSF 

 

Nooshin Abtahi, MD - Contra Costa Health Services  

 

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Rajiv Pramanik, MD - Contra Costa Health Services  

 

 Rachel Stern, MD - Ventura County Health Care Agency 

 

 

Research Staff 

Nilpa Shah, MPH, Program Manager - UCSF 

Kristan Olazo, MPH, Research Data Analyst - UCSF 

Faviola Garcia, Research Data Analyst - UCSF 

Jaime Orozco, Engagement Coordinator - UCSF 

Soo Park, Data Coordinator - UCSF 

Christian Gutierrez, Clinical Research Coordinator - UCSF 

Sara Guzman-Estrada, Clinical Research Coordinator – UCSF 

Monica Naranjo Arellano, Clinical Research Coordinator - UCSF 

Jorge Larreynaga, MSN, Clinical Research Coordinator - UCSF 

Jasmine Chukwueke, MPH, Research Data Analyst - UCSF 

Maria Plascencia-Mooradian, Clinical Research Coordinator - UCSF 

Kelcie Rodriguez, MEd, Project Policy Analyst - UC Davis 

Lina Tieu, PhD, MPH, Postdoctoral Scholar - UC Davis 

Melissa Gosdin, PhD, Qualitative Research Analyst - UC Davis 

Mary Ellen Janas, IT Project Manager - Contra Costa Health Services 

Marjan Fathinejad - Contra Costa Health Services 

Genevieve Jensen - Ventura County Health Care Agency 

Funding 

This project is funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) 

IRB 

This study is approved by the University of California San Francisco Institutional Review Board, IRB# 23-38340. If you have any questions about the study, you can email Dr. Urmimala Sarkar at [email protected]. You can reach the UCSF Human Research Protection Program office at (415) 476-1814, 8 am to 5 pm, Monday through Friday. 

Contact Us 

Feel free to reach out with questions about the study. 

Marker with solid fill2540 23rd Street, San Francisco CA 94110 

Envelope with solid fill[email protected]