Evaluation of a participatory faith-based breast cancer educational intervention: Community partner assessment

Background: Although community partner engagement is a key component in faith-based health promotion/disease prevention intervention research, the perspective of community partners on their experiences in the intervention process has been infrequently investigated. Methods: Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 African American community partners (i.e. four pastors and eight lay health coordinators) from eight churches in greater Baltimore, Maryland that engaged in a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) breast cancer educational intervention. Audio-taped interviews were transcribed and coded and content analysis was used to identify themes across the codes. Results: Findings show that pastors support a holistic approach to health, described by the respondents as the need to nurture the mind, body, and spirit. Pastors further perceived their role in the church as that of a facilitator and preferred that they be responsible for providing religious and spiritual information, although they did not require the inclusion of religious elements as part of the intervention format. Lay health coordinators described their role in the intervention as that of a link between the pastors, study participants and academic researchers. In addition, pastors and LHCs emphasized that religious and/or spiritual program elements should balance the importance of reaching participants with critical health information as opposed to only emphasizing religious or spiritual beliefs. Conclusions: Study findings suggest faith-based educational interventions that follow a CBPR approach are important in promoting cancer awareness in the African American community. Including community partner assessment can further elucidate critical intervention impacts and help address health disparities, particularly in underserved communities.