Faith-based health promotion: A study of university and church collaboration to address local health disparities

Issues: The persistent health disparities experienced by African Americans are a major public health concern. Implementing church-based health promotion programs provides a promising approach to address these health injustices. Local universities represent a valuable asset to support community health promotion efforts. More practice-based evidence is needed to understand how church leaders and university students can combine their skills and resources to address health disparities.

Description: Using an approach that combined asset-based community development and social marketing, public health graduate students and faculty partnered with representatives from a local African American faith-based coalition to identify important health topics and establish appropriate communication channels. This project explored how the collaborative process contributed towards addressing the determinants of health inequalities in the participating community. During the development of the campaign, data from participant observations, focus groups, and interviews were analyzed to illuminate the collaborative process.

Lessons Learned: A synergistic relationship between church leaders and graduate public health students is feasible provided an effective decision making process and ample communication regarding objectives and timelines. These findings extend our understanding and provide insight into principles regarding how to best use the collaborative processes to improve the effectiveness of partnerships between students, faculty, and faith-based organizations.

Recommendations: We recommend the development of a virtual database containing a collection of health materials disseminated in the brochures and monthly seminars. We also recommend further analysis to determine the success of church-based health promotion in organizations with varying human resources and program capacity.