Spiritual Calling: Achieving Optimal Health through Faithful Action

Faith-based institutions (FBIs) play a central role in defining belief systems and values associated with personal and lifestyle choices. FBIs (e.g., churches) are centerpieces of local communities and have provided stable, supportive environments where major social change has spawned. They serve as key venues for not only assessing and addressing individual behaviors and social norms but also translating and disseminating health messages. FBIs have been able to apply health promotion into their mission and related activities; however, little has been documented on strategies for intersecting health and spiritual messages to specifically address health disparities. This presentation will describe qualitative evaluation findings of a Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) 2010 program that utilized FBIs as salient outlets for translating health messages into spiritual callings as well as promoting optimal health through faithful action. By translating health messages into spiritual ones, these FBIs have achieved individual behavior and policy changes within their African American and Latino congregations to address disparities within diabetes.