Valencia Koomson
Tufts University, MA·Engineering
High blood pressure is now one of the biggest health threats in Ghana. Like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, it is a non-communicable disease, meaning it is not spread by infection, and such diseases are rising fast in low- and middle-income countries.
- Fields
Engineering
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
hypertension
high blood pressure
mHealth
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Adapt the Medtronic Empower Health app into AHOMKA, a Ghana-specific mobile health platform, using a user-centered design process that is revised step by step with feedback from patients and clinicians.
- Conduct a 6-month study with a group of hypertension patients at cardiovascular clinics in Greater Accra and Volta to test whether the AHOMKA platform is usable and practical.
- Assess changes in blood pressure over a 12-month feasibility study of AHOMKA users in one urban and one rural region of Ghana.
- Form the AHOMKA Research and Education Network to train researchers and speed up mobile health research in Ghana.
More about the research
Mobile phones are everywhere in Ghana, so phone-based health tools could help patients manage their blood pressure. Still, little is known about how well such mobile health (mHealth) tools work for hypertension in sub-Saharan Africa. This project asks whether a phone platform adapted to local culture can be usable, workable and helpful in practice.
Why it matters
Hypertension is the most common risk factor for non-communicable disease in sub-Saharan Africa. A culturally adapted phone platform could help patients in urban and rural Ghana take better care of their blood pressure and stay in closer contact with their providers. Its feasibility results could guide how mobile health tools are designed and scaled across the region.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
Tufts University: 19 labs on PI Pages, $278M a year on research, 144 research doctorates a year.
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