The Church Bridge Project: An Academic–Community Perspective of a Church-Based Weight Management Pilot Intervention among Young Adult African Americans

Abstract

Background: Churches are effective community partners and settings to address weight management among African Americans. There is limited information on the use of churches to reach young adult populations and church collaborations with primary care clinics. Objectives: The Church Bridge Project represents a community–academic partnership that presents the recruitment process of a church-based weight management intervention and describes baseline data of participants recruited from churches and primary care providers. We also discuss research contributions, challenges and limitations, study applicability, and practice implications from an academic and community perspective. Methods: Church leaders were involved in the entire research process. The theory-driven intervention included 12 diabetes prevention program-adapted education and motivational interviewing (MI)-guided sessions. Participants were recruited through primary care providers and church leaders. Demographics, medical and weight history, stage of change for weight loss, social support, and self-efficacy for diet and physical activity, weight, and girth circumferences were measured. Baseline descriptive data were analyzed. Results: Of 64 potential participants, 42 (65.6%) were enrolled in the study and 16 (25.0%) completed baseline data collection. No participants were recruited through primary care providers. Recruited participants were similar to the target population except for being all obese and mostly female. The mean ± SD age of participants was 34.31 ± 8.86 years with most reporting having more than a high school education (n = 14 [87.5%]), individual yearly income of less than $59,000 (n = 12 [75.0%]), and been married or living with a partner (n = 9 [56.3%]). Most reported a history of hypertension and an immediate family history of diabetes and hypertension. Most participants were classified as class III obesity. Conclusions: Young adults and primary care providers are difficult to engage in church-based interventions. Church leaders were comfortable with a collaborate model for decision making, but not an empower model. Churches remain a successful method to reach African Americans; however, more research is needed to motivate young adults to participate in health intervention research.

The church bridge project: Lessons learned from comparing the outcomes of an adapted church-based weight management intervention targeting african american adults

“…Demographics, weight, height, and medical and weight histories were collected at baseline. Instruments deemed valid and reliable during previous research were used at pre-and post-intervention periods to measure self-efficacy [13] and social support [17] for diet and physical activity, physical activity levels, [18] health-related quality of life, [19] and 24-hour recall data. Weight and girth circumferences (abdomen, waist, and hip measured below the last rib, above the iliac crest and at the widest point of the buttocks, respectively) were collected pre-and post-intervention and at each session attended.…”

“…All data were collected by trained research staff through the Bridge2U web and mobile application system. [13] Mean scores were calculated for obesity-related disease and family disease risk ("yes" or "no" responses to diagnosis with hypertension, diabetes, reflux, heart attack/stroke, high cholesterol and high triglycerides), and weight-related behaviors (checking weight with a scale, eating breakfast, exercising, and recording food intake). A "yes" response was scores as "1" and a "no" response was scored as "0" and a mean was calculated across items.…”

“…This study builds on work previously described [13,14] to include the theoretical framework and recruitment methods and baseline results for the Phase 1 intervention. The original primary aim of the Church Bridge Project was to assess the feasibility of a theory-driven (Socio-ecological, Transtheoretical and Health Belief Models), church-based intervention with a telehealth component to reduce obesity and related chronic disease disparities in rural, African Americans using the RE-AIM framework (Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance).…”

“…The development of the Church Bridge Project involved a community-academic partnership using a community-based participatory approach. [13] The resulting Phase 1 intervention is described previously, [13] including theoretical framework, recruitment methods, and baseline results. The 12-session weight management intervention was implemented and data were collected over six months between September 2016 and February 2017.…”

“…The phase 1 intervention was originally designed to be 12 sessions delivered over the course of six months, to alleviate the church of intense (weekly) program delivery. [13] During phase 1, we identified program completion and re-tention as one of the biggest challenges. Since we saw the greatest decrease after the phase 1 delivery transitioned from weekly to bimonthly delivery, phase 2 intervention sessions were delivered over a shorter time period to result in total intervention delivery over eight weeks versus six months for Phase 1.…”