Walk Your Heart to Health: Results of a community health promoter training program

This presentation describes findings from the evaluation of a program that trains community health promoters to lead walking groups for a 2-month period and to support their continuation for a 6-month period. The Walk Your Heart to Health walking group program is part of a multi-level community-based participatory research intervention carried out by the Healthy Environments Partnership to promote cardiovascular health in low-income, predominantly African American and Latino communities in Detroit. We will describe the training program content and evaluation. The program was focused on several areas including: (1) building the capacity of community health promoters to organize walking groups, (2) increasing their knowledge about the relationship between physical activity and cardiovascular health, and (3) developing leadership skills needed to promote cohesion and social support among walking group members. The literature on group-based physical activity programs reports that the latter is particularly important in maintaining physical activity behavior among adults. The evaluation is formative in nature and includes both an assessment of process and impact using quantitative and qualitative methods. Process evaluation includes participant observation, group discussions, and documentation of training and walking group program activities. Training program effectiveness is evaluated through walking group participant surveys. Findings from the process evaluation and preliminary results on the role of community health promoters in fostering cohesion and social support among walking group members will be presented. We will discuss the implications of our findings for other community-based efforts to improve health through group interventions such as walking groups.