Developing culturally congruent weight maintenance programs for African American church members

Abstract

The results suggest that integrating faith themes into a weight loss maintenance program may increase its long-term impact on participants' health behavior change.

Moving Forward in Their Journey: Participants’ Experience of Taste & See, A Church-Based Programme to Develop a Healthy Relationship with Food

“…Consistent with our findings, Reicks et al [18] identified how women in the study drew on their relationship with God through praying for help to overcome emotional eating and using Biblical scriptures to understand eating behaviour, which then encouraged women to change their motives for eating. Similarly, the findings of a recent focus group study of participants who had previously participated in a church-based weight loss programme mirrored the findings of our study [19]. Seale et al [19] concluded that participants anchored themselves on key scriptures, for example 1 Corinthians 6:19, where the body is described as a temple of the Holy Spirit-this provided them with a conscious awareness to treat their bodies better, which in turn motivated them to maintain the behavioural changes learned on the interventions.…”

“…Similarly, the findings of a recent focus group study of participants who had previously participated in a church-based weight loss programme mirrored the findings of our study [19]. Seale et al [19] concluded that participants anchored themselves on key scriptures, for example 1 Corinthians 6:19, where the body is described as a temple of the Holy Spirit-this provided them with a conscious awareness to treat their bodies better, which in turn motivated them to maintain the behavioural changes learned on the interventions. Participants in our study also anchored themselves on specific scriptures including this one when navigating through their daily lives post-intervention.…”

“…For example, certain scriptures served as prompts for participants to think about their eating behaviour motives, whilst other scriptures encouraged participants to make better choices around food. Furthermore, Seale et al [19] also found that participants were actively collaborating with God to seek help and find strength beyond their own means to successfully address the struggles they experienced with their weight. This is discussed in our theme 'beginning to use faith as a resource', where participants used the resources available to them through their faith to achieve the lifestyle changes they sought to implement.…”

Recommendations for a Culturally Relevant Internet-Based Tool to Promote Physical Activity Among Overweight Young African American Women, Alabama, 2010–2011

“…NGT facilitates balanced participation among participants (13) and permits qualitative data to be transformed into a structured rank list (14). This method has been previously used in studies to generate feedback to develop health promotion programs targeted to AAs (15,16). …”

Short Term outcomes of a Faith-based Obesity Attenuation and Prevention Program for Low Income African American Children: CHHIL Feasibility and Efficacy Study

“…Given the strong identification with religion as a social support mechanism, and its importance in the everyday lives of AAs, it follows that health interventions incorporating spiritual and cultural contextualization have been effective [10][11][12]. Health promotion interventions conducted in faith communities provide a promising opportunity to enhance emotional, physical and spiritual health.…”