Matthew Hickey
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
High blood pressure (hypertension) is the leading preventable cause of illness and early death worldwide. It is a major driver of heart and blood vessel disease in sub-Saharan Africa, where 10% or fewer people with hypertension have their blood pressure under control.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
hypertension
high blood pressure
cardiovascular disease
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jun 2030
What they work on
- Identify patient-level barriers to taking blood pressure medication within an integrated HIV–hypertension care model in rural Kenya, using theory-informed mixed methods within the SEARCH SAPPHIRE trial.
- Measure patient preferences for hypertension care delivery with a discrete choice experiment, then develop a patient-centered strategy and pilot it to see whether it is feasible and acceptable.
- Adapt core and enhanced strategies for community health worker telehealth care with stakeholders through Implementation Mapping, accounting for differences between HIV clinics and general primary care clinics in Kenya.
- Compare core versus enhanced strategies in a cluster randomized trial across 16 Kenyan Ministry of Health centers, measuring program uptake, population blood pressure control at 18 months, sustainment and cost-effectiveness.
- Expand the HIV Synthesis simulation model to include health system constraints and HIV–hypertension integration strategies, using WHO framework data and HLB-SIMPLe trial data, and estimate health effects and cost-effectiveness across African settings.
- Assess how model results influence policymakers' decisions, using workshops, interactive modeling tools and qualitative interviews guided by the Weiss schema for how research is used.
More about the research
People living with HIV now live longer, so cardiovascular disease is becoming a leading cause of illness among them too. Effective, cheap medicines already exist. The open question is how to deliver care so that people actually get treated and stay in treatment. These projects use implementation science, the study of how proven treatments can be put into practice in real health systems. They combine patient research, clinical trials and computer simulation to work out how to combine hypertension care with HIV care and primary care in Africa.
Why it matters
Identifying which delivery strategies are effective and affordable could help ministries of health, implementers and global funders bring hypertension treatment to millions of people in Africa, with and without HIV, and lower cardiovascular disease. The evidence could also shape global guidance and integrated primary care models in low-resource settings, including U.S. safety-net systems.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Community-based Implementation of Hypertension Screening and Telehealth Systems in Kenya (COMPASS)
NIH · Sep 2025 – Jun 2030
From Evidence to Scale: Implementation Science and Simulation Modeling to Transform HIV-Hypertension Care Integration
NIH · Jun 2026 – Feb 2029
Implementation Strategies to Improve Hypertension Treatment in Kenya
NIH · Jul 2022 – Jun 2027
Closest labs
Mark Huffman
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Analyze through multi-level mediation how team-based care in the WHO HEARTS package lowers blood pressure at clinic and patient levels in the Hypertension Treatment in Nigeria Program.
Youngji Jo
University of Connecticut, CT·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Determine how an integrated HIV-noncommunicable disease care model affects clinical outcomes for people living with HIV who have at least one cardiometabolic condition, using Zambia's TASKPEN trial dataset.
Devin Mann
New York University, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Develop community health worker training modules for remote blood pressure monitoring, plus electronic health record support tools, using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research and user-centered design.
The school
University of California-San Francisco: 89 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 164 research doctorates a year.
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