{
  "release_id": "2b2017b84496b985",
  "id": "cardio:nonphysician-hypertension-treatment",
  "owner": "cardio",
  "kind": "intervention",
  "slug": "nonphysician-hypertension-treatment",
  "name": "Hypertension treatment by nonphysician professionals, such as pharmacists and nurses",
  "aliases": [
    "Nonphysician hypertension treatment"
  ],
  "atlases": [
    "cardio"
  ],
  "summary_plain": "Health professionals who are not doctors, such as pharmacists and nurses, providing blood pressure medicine, as long as they have proper training and prescribing authority, follow set management protocols and work under a doctor's oversight.",
  "summary_technical": "WHO 2021 recommendation 8 (conditional, low-certainty evidence) suggests that nonphysician professionals such as pharmacists and nurses can provide pharmacological treatment of hypertension when proper training, prescribing authority, specific management protocols and physician oversight are in place. Which professionals may prescribe in a given country was not checked.",
  "editorial_state": "draft",
  "last_substantive_edit": "2026-10-11",
  "last_evidence_check": "2026-10-11",
  "next_review_due": null,
  "external_ids": [],
  "navigation": {
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      "condition-area": [
        "hypertension"
      ]
    }
  },
  "payload": {
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    "taxonomy_codes": []
  },
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  "review": {
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    "current": [],
    "conflicting": [],
    "stale": [],
    "inactive": []
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      "category": "recommendation",
      "statement": "WHO suggests that medicine for hypertension can be provided by nonphysician professionals such as pharmacists and nurses, provided there is proper training, prescribing authority, specific management protocols and physician oversight.",
      "context": {
        "id": "cardio:ctx-who-2021-adults-confirmed-hypertension",
        "label": "Adults with confirmed hypertension (WHO 2021 recommendations 1a, 4, 5 and 8)",
        "recipient": "adult",
        "population": "Adults with a confirmed diagnosis of hypertension. Recommendation 1a covers systolic 140 mmHg or higher or diastolic 90 mmHg or higher. Recommendations 4, 5 and 8 cover adults with hypertension who need medicine. WHO says the guideline targets non-pregnant adults who were appropriately diagnosed and counselled about lifestyle changes.",
        "care_setting": "Not stated for this recommendation in the source",
        "geography": "Global WHO guidance; national adoption not recorded",
        "life_stage": "Adult",
        "gestational_age_min_days": null,
        "gestational_age_max_days": null,
        "postnatal_age_min_days": null,
        "postnatal_age_max_days": null,
        "gestational_age_status": null,
        "postnatal_age_status": null,
        "followup_description": "Not applicable (recommendation context)",
        "eligibility": {
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            "Adult",
            "Confirmed diagnosis of hypertension",
            "Counselled about lifestyle modifications (WHO scope statement)"
          ],
          "exclusion": [
            "Pregnant patients: WHO says the recommendations target non-pregnant patients"
          ]
        }
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      "evidence_stage": "guidance",
      "certainty": "low",
      "certainty_method": "The certainty is the GRADE level WHO prints in the strength label of this recommendation. It is WHO's assessment of the evidence base, not an assessment by this atlas.",
      "limitations": "WHO labels this statement \"Conditional recommendation, low-certainty evidence\". The certainty above is that label. The conditions are part of the recommendation, and none of them was checked against any country's rules. Global WHO guidance written for adults who are not pregnant; national adoption is not recorded. No evidence review behind the recommendation was read by this cluster. The WHO publication page and the PDF disagree on the page count (48 versus 61); this was not resolved.",
      "editorial_state": "draft",
      "checked_at": "2026-10-11",
      "next_review_due": null,
      "valid_from": null,
      "valid_to": null,
      "citations": [
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            "source_effective_date": "2021-08-24",
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            "source_state": "current"
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            "reuse_basis": "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO, as the PDF states. Short quotations with attribution only. The non-commercial and share-alike terms need a decision on the atlas public data licence before any reuse beyond short quotation. Neither snapshot is committed.",
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            "reuse_basis": "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO, as the PDF states. Short quotations with attribution only. The non-commercial and share-alike terms need a decision on the atlas public data licence before any reuse beyond short quotation. Neither snapshot is committed.",
            "public_text": "quote"
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            "reuse_basis": "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO, as the PDF states. Short quotations with attribution only. The non-commercial and share-alike terms need a decision on the atlas public data licence before any reuse beyond short quotation. Neither snapshot is committed.",
            "public_text": "quote"
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          "locator": "PDF page 9, Executive summary, paragraph 2, sentence 2",
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            "reuse_basis": "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO, as the PDF states. Short quotations with attribution only. The non-commercial and share-alike terms need a decision on the atlas public data licence before any reuse beyond short quotation. Neither snapshot is committed.",
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            "reuse_basis": "CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO, as the PDF states. Short quotations with attribution only. The non-commercial and share-alike terms need a decision on the atlas public data licence before any reuse beyond short quotation. Neither snapshot is committed.",
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  "decisions": [
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      "id": "cardio:rec-who-2021-r8",
      "direction": "for",
      "intervention_id": "cardio:nonphysician-hypertension-treatment",
      "context_id": "cardio:ctx-who-2021-adults-confirmed-hypertension",
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      "issuer_id": "cardio:who",
      "jurisdiction": "Global WHO guidance; national adoption not recorded",
      "strength_label": "Conditional recommendation, low-certainty evidence",
      "strength_system": "GRADE. Section 2.5 of the WHO guideline (PDF page 17) says the guideline development group rated the certainty of evidence and developed the recommendations with the GRADE approach, and it defines a strong recommendation and a weak or conditional one.",
      "effective_date": "2021-08-24",
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}