Scheduled for Research Coordinating Board Oral Presentations: General Focus, Friday, March 16, 2007, 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM, Convention Center: 327


Testing Community-Based Participatory Research Methods for Health Promotion Outcomes in a Faith-Based Setting

Eva I. Doyle1, Beth Lanning1, Jim Walton2, Katy Crosslin1, Camonia Long1 and Lindsey Long1, (1)Baylor University, Waco, TX, (2)Baylor Health Care System, Dallas, TX

The Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) model was used to develop a faith-based health intervention partnership with leaders of a nonprofit urban community organization in central Texas. This pilot study was designed to develop and test methods for (1) building health promotion leadership capacity among community members and (2) partnering with these leaders to design and pilot a faith-based health promotion intervention in their community. The 15-month project was implemented in four developmental phases in which the researchers applied CBPR partnership principles to collect baseline health promotion data in the community and recruit community members as leadership trainees (Phase I), implemented an 8-week health promotion leadership training intervention (Phase II), worked with the leaders trained in Phase II to develop and pilot a 12-week health promotion intervention in the community (Phase III), and expanded and further trained community leaders to revise and re-test the community health promotion intervention (Phase IV). Qualitative measures resulted in detected increases in leadership skills and perceived leadership efficacy among the leadership trainees. Increases were also detected among intervention leaders and other community participants in knowledge and behaviors related to regular exercise and vegetable and fruit intake. Quantitative measures of spiritual well-being in this faith-oriented population were high at both pre- and post-test measures with no intervention-specific differences detected. Recommendations for future CBPR-based research in faith-based settings include the use of spiritually-based training and intervention perspectives as a motivator for increases in leadership capacity and in health-related knowledge and behaviors. A different approach is recommended for measuring changes in spiritual health when working with a faith-oriented population.
Keyword(s): community-based programs, leadership development, research

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