Helpers help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and hypertension to understand their condition and the need to adhere to anti-hypertensive medication.

People living in group homes or professionally managed settings were never enrolled, because group home staff refused access. The authors say this removed 646 people, about 25% of possible participants, so the findings do not apply to your clients in supported or supervised housing. The people who joined were more likely to be Black and were about 3 years younger on average than the wider Medicaid population with IDD and high blood pressure, so the results may not carry over to everyone in that group. About a quarter of those who started, 25.7%, were lost by the third survey, so the later results come from a smaller and possibly different group than the one first recruited. Some participants likely struggled with the reading level of both the messages and the survey questions, even though the team worked on readability. Everything comes from one state's Medicaid programme, so it may not apply where eligibility rules and disability services differ. The only thing measured was knowledge. Whether people actually filled and took their blood pressure medicine, and whether their health changed, was not answered.

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. The text supplied gives no further funding statement or sponsor role.

Do not read this as proof that the education programme got people taking their blood pressure medicine. The study measured knowledge only, and among the adults with IDD themselves the messages produced no significant gain over the comparison group. Do not credit the programme for the Helpers' higher scores either: Helpers scored better than Members whichever group they were in, and on the earlier follow-up the difference between the two Helper groups did not reach significance (p = 0.06).