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Can that be done on a Sunday? Changing public health practice to enhance access to health screenings and linkage to care services during Sunday church services to address African American diabetes-heart disease-stroke disparities
Project Description: Project Faith Influencing Transformation (FIT) is a pilot diabetes-heart disease-stroke prevention intervention focused on exercise/healthy eating along with increasing reach and accessibility of health screening/LTC services with church-community members in 6 African American churches (3 intervention and 3 comparison churches). Health screenings (blood pressure, cholesterol, A1C, BMI) and feedback on screening results were offered during Sunday church services. Intervention participants received information from community health workers on enrolling in LTC (e.g., access to health insurance, primary care physicians, medication adherence assistance) immediately after health screenings. Intervention participants with non-normal results met with YMCA representatives to pre-enroll in their church’s weekly group diabetes prevention (weight-loss) program.
Lessons Learned: Three-hundred-fifty-six participants (average=60 participants/church) were recruited; all received health screenings. Among intervention participants, about 50% met with LTC and YMCA representatives. Subsequently, 9 enrolled and 61 received episodic LTC services; 44 enrolled in their church’s weekly weight-loss program. Health screening/LTC processes took 30-45 minutes/participant and required 15 volunteers. Participants expressed appreciation of: health screenings during church services, ability to ask questions about their screening results, and opportunities to meet with LTC and YMCA representatives.
Recommendations: Increasing volunteer capacity to improve health screening/LTC services flowtime and enhanced pastoral promotion of church-based LTC and weight-loss programming are recommended. Other recommendations and next steps will be discussed.
Learning Areas:
Administer health education strategies, interventions and programsChronic disease management and prevention
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Provision of health care to the public
Learning Objectives:
Describe a process for conducting health screenings and providing linkage to care services during African American church services
Discuss recommended strategies to enhance use of church-based health screening and linkage to care services in African American churches.
Keyword(s): African American, Health Assessment
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have conducted community-based research for over 20 years and am an NIH-funded researcher conducting community-based participatory research on several health disparity grants in the African American faith community. I also teach undergraduate and graduate courses on community-based research.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.