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Abstract #153883

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Bernadette M. West, PhD¹, Elyse Pivnick, MCP², and Shachi Gupta, MBBS¹. (1) School of Public Health, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, 683 Hoes Lane West, Piscataway, NJ 08854, 732-235-4535, westbm@umdnj.edu, (2) Isles, Inc, 10 Wood Street, Trenton, NJ 08618

The Trenton Spirit Walk Initiative was launched in 2005 with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The goal of this three-year initiative is to involve Trenton faith-based and civic organizations in projects that encourage physical activity in the city. Projects include 1) holding an annual walk to encourage use of an underused city park, 2) creating walking groups and 3) planning a Trenton walking loop that will link houses of worship and other interesting features of the community. The funding source is interested in encouraging the participation of faith-based communities and building leadership for health within these communities. Our evaluation is monitoring levels of engagement in the planning process through surveys, focus groups and use of other less traditional methods. Using a logic model we describe the faith-based initiative (inputs, activities, outputs, and outcomes), our evaluation process and provide data on the results of the first year of the initiative, along with challenges we have encountered in engaging faith-based groups and approaches that have worked to sustain participation.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe two methods for evaluating level of community engagement in a faith-based initiative
• Construct a logic model with measurable inputs and outputs to describe a public-health initiative and its evaluation process
• Articulate at least 4 challenges in working with faith-based groups and methods for overcoming them

Keywords: Faith Community, Obesity

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

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.

• Slides (pdf) or Handout