Pathways to heart health: A multilevel community-based participatory intervention to promote heart health

Brief Description: Residents of economically challenged urban communities experience a disproportionate burden of cardiovascular disease. Because African Americans and Latinos are more likely to live in such urban environments, these conditions likely contribute to persistent racial and ethnic disparities in health. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches can contribute to the development and implementation of innovative, multilevel interventions to improve cardiovascular health in urban communities.

Community Approaches to Cardiovascular Health: Pathways to Heart Health (CATCH:PATH) is a multilevel intervention designed to improve heart health in Detroit. The intervention design emerged from a year-long CBPR planning process that collaboratively engaged community residents, community-based organizations, health service providers, and academic researchers. We will provide a brief description of the planning process, and the community identified priorities that emerged from it, then describe in detail the multilevel (i.e., individual, group, built environment) intervention that emerged from that process. We will discuss dimensions of the intervention, including the study design, walking groups (group level intervention), collaborative efforts to promote community engagement in newly developed Greenways (social and built environment intervention), and actions to promote local policies conducive to physical activity. The CBPR approach used to implement and evaluate each aspect of the intervention will be described, and lessons learned and implications for the implementation of participatory, multilevel community interventions to promote heart health discussed.