Faithful Families, Thriving Communities: Bridging Faith and Health Through a State-Level Partnership

Abstract

Faith communities are increasingly being recognized as important leaders in community health work, both in the United States and globally. However, faith communities are also often working at or beyond capacity in terms of meeting the social, emotional, and health needs of the communities they serve. To bridge these gaps and build on the significant assets that faith communities possess, the Faithful Families Thriving Communities program was created in 2007 as a partnership between the North Carolina Division of Public Health and North Carolina State University. Based on the social-ecological model, Faithful Families trains and empowers lay leaders from the faith community to coteach and partner with health educators from Cooperative Extension or public health as they support individual members and the faith community at large to adopt changes that can address inequities in their communities related to access to healthy foods and places to be active. This essay highlights the formation and development of this partnership, outlining challenges and best practices for this kind of “bridging” between public health and communities of faith, particularly related to state-level programmatic support and collaboration.

Identifying barriers, facilitators, and implementation strategies for a faith-based physical activity program

“…While these findings shed light on the organizationallevel factors affecting implementation of Faith in Action, more targeted studies are needed to identify determinants that impact implementation and implementation strategies that target these determinants among a broader range of religious denominations for wider scale-up and dissemination. While churches are promising venues for health promotion programs [39][40][41][42], including PA interventions [8,11,[43][44][45], the lack of understanding of organizational context and determinants for implementation and sustainment limit dissemination capability for these programs. Few faith-based health promotion studies have been taken to scale and [46,47] most have targeted African-American populations [46,48,49], and only a few have targeted PA as a main outcome, with limited effectiveness [8,11].…”

American Roma: A Cultural Care Case Study

“…If such a church exists within the health services catchment area, there is an opportunity to explore a relationship with the church to provide health promotion programs for its members. The church has been a trusted place for health promotion efforts in other minority populations that have experienced discrimination and health disparities (Hardison-Moody & Yao, 2019;Stewart, 2016). An ambitious approach undertaken by North Carolina addressed health promotion within faith communities using lay coinstructors, materials that could be tailored for the specific faith beliefs, and structured efforts to address health promotion at the individual, social/family, faith organization, and larger community levels (Hardison-Moody & Yao, 2019).…”

“…The church has been a trusted place for health promotion efforts in other minority populations that have experienced discrimination and health disparities (Hardison-Moody & Yao, 2019;Stewart, 2016). An ambitious approach undertaken by North Carolina addressed health promotion within faith communities using lay coinstructors, materials that could be tailored for the specific faith beliefs, and structured efforts to address health promotion at the individual, social/family, faith organization, and larger community levels (Hardison-Moody & Yao, 2019). Currently, there is no literature or suggestions from Roma scholars that faith-based health promotion would be a successful endeavor in the Gypsy church; however, this is worth further exploration.…”

Identifying barriers, facilitators, and implementation strategies for a faith-based physical activity program

“…While churches are promising venues for health promotion programs, [39][40][41][42] including PA interventions, 8,11,[43][44][45][46] the lack of understanding of organizational context and determinants for implementation and sustainment limit dissemination capability for these programs. Few faith-based health promotion studies have been taken to scale and 47,48 most have targeted African-American populations; 47,49,50 and only a few have targeted PA as a main outcome, with limited effectiveness.…”