Social Network Structures in African American Churches: Implications for Health Promotion Programs

Abstract

The prevalence of obesity among African Americans is higher than among other racial/ethnic groups. African American churches hold a central role in promoting health in the community; yet, churchbased interventions have had limited impact on obesity. While recent studies have described the influence of social networks on health behaviors, obesity interventions informed by social network analysis have been limited. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 281 African American men and women from three churches in northeast urban cities in the USA. Data were collected on sociodemographic and clinical factors and anthropometrics. Using a social network survey applying a name generator, we computed network level metrics. Exponential random graph models (ERGM) were performed to examine whether each structural property found in the empirical (observed) networks occurred more frequently than expected by chance by comparing the empirical networks to the randomly simulated networks. Overall, church friendship networks were sparse (low density). We also found that while friendship ties were more reciprocated between dyads in church networks, and there were more tendencies for clustering of friendships (significant positive transitive closure) than in random networks, other characteristics such as expansiveness (number of actors with a great number of friends) did not differ from what would be expected by chance in random networks. These data suggest that interventions with African American churches should not assume a unitary network through which a single intervention should be used.

Faith Community Nurses Key to Promoting Health in At-Risk Communities

“…Review results repeatedly highlighted the impact nurses—and more specifically FCNs—can have on the outcomes of at-risk populations by the regular incorporation of health education and supportive interventions (Abell & Blankenship, 2019; Austin et al, 2013; Cooper & Zimmerman, 2017; Harris, 2011; Opalinski et al, 2017; Pappas-Rogich & King, 2014). Several of the articles included in this review recognized an opportunity and role for collaborative partnerships between FCNs and faith organizations to improve health outcomes (Harris, 2011; Nam et al, 2019; Rowland & Isaac, 2014; Shackelford et al, 2014). Two articles suggested FCNs be engaged as Ministers of Health in acknowledgment of the significant role played in the support of health education and positive outcomes (Balint & George, 2015; Chase-Ziolek, 2015).…”

Body mass index and obesity-related behaviors in African American church-based networks: A social network analysis

“…Density (0.01, 0.01, 0.02), average degree (1.40, 0.60, 1.16), reciprocity (0.21, 0.14, 0.23), transitivity (0.08, 0.08, 0.14), clustering coefficient (0.21, 0.17, 0.20) and centralization (0.13, 0.05, 0.05) were similar among the three churches. The detailed network level findings have been published elsewhere [26]. Overall, 61% of participants among the three churches reported that their network members were friends; 3% were household members; and 17% were non-household family members such as siblings and relatives.…”

“…Among African Americans, the church has been a central community resource and a key setting for health intervention recruitment and participation [25]. In a recent study of African American church-based social networks, the importance of understanding social network structures for developing group-based health promotion programs at the network-level was demonstrated [26]. To date, however, no published study is available that examines how African American individual's network characteristics (i.e., individual-level network analysis) are associated with their body mass index (BMI) and obesity-related behaviors using a sociocentric network approach.…”