Lessons learned from investigating the sustainability of a church-based health program

Issues: This research project examined the sustainability of Health Congregations in Action (HCIA), a multi-year health promotion program. Thirty Kansas United Methodist churches participated in the program to build their capacity to conduct health ministry. HCIA is similar to other church-based health promotion interventions; as such examining the sustainability of the program was identified as important. Description: HCIA trained leadership teams on leadership, planning, wellness and overall health. Each group received training on developing and implementing four health improvement plans. Congregants were asked to complete Health Risk Assessments at baseline, one and two years. To determine the sustainability of reported health behavior changes, a follow-up modified health risk assessment was conducted one year after HCIA ended with a sample of congregations participating in the translational project, Healthy Congregations 2 (HC2). Congregational leaders and research staff struggled to locate some past participants and to motivate interest from remaining past participants. Despite barriers, congregational leaders from twelve of the HCIA churches that are also participating in HC2 were able to sample a small group of previous participants. Lessons Learned: Determining the sustainability of reported health behavior change is important for the efficiency and effectiveness of future church-based health promotion programs and interventions. Securing participation in follow-up data collection is a difficult and time consuming task. Recommendations: Sustainability evaluations should be included in initial program/intervention plans. This initial planning could potentially ease the processes of securing participation of participants and aid in the collection of follow-up data.