Community Based Nutrition Intervention in at Risk Population Grant uri icon

abstract

  • The goal of this proposed prevention project is to establish Church-Based Centers for Healthy Living (CBCHL) targeted at the black adult population in Edgecombe and Pitt Counties in Eastern North Carolina. The purpose for establishing these CBCHLs is to involve church leaders in a long term commitment to educate their members to dietary and physical activity behaviors that would promote a healthy lifestyle. The first step of the project is to create in each of the participating churches an environment where an emphasis on being healthy is an everyday occurrence. A key element of accomplishing this is to designate time during Sunday worship for Bible based motivational health messages. Bible based messages resonate well with African American church members. A church and a pastor have a special place in southern African American communities. Thus, local pastors (and other church leaders) and the project director, who in addition to working as a professor of nutrition at East Carolina University, is an ordained minister, will regularly used biblical passages to teach members of the congregations that healthy lifestyle is a key religious duty. Pastors of the churches included in this project already realize the urgency for a lifestyle change of their members. They have agreed to support all of the educational activities of this project. Only after a health and wellness environment is established will other activities be initiated. Through a variety of innovative interactive health promotion activities, participating members will learn about the connection between healthful eating, regular exercise, and desirable health outcomes. In addition, specific practical assignments regarding the use of food labels while grocery shopping and healthy food preparation techniques will be discussed and assigned as practical homework activities. Positive testimonies, gifts, team competition and other techniques will be used as motivational activities.

date/time interval

  • January 2008 - March 2009