Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More: The role of faith communities in improving community health

Issues: To support and enhance behavior change, it is critical that faith communities change policies, practices and environments to promote healthy eating and physical activity. Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More (Faithful Families) implements research-based policies, programs and environmental changes to promote healthy eating and physical activity in faith communities in four counties in North Carolina. Description: Faithful Families combines individual education and lay leader training with environmental and policy changes to promote healthy eating and physical activity in any faith community setting. Interviews and focus groups have demonstrated that individual educational sessions have empowered faith community members to become health advocates for policy and environmental changes in their faith communities and in the community-at-large. Lessons Learned: Prior to program implementation, participating faith communities had few policies or practices that encouraged healthy eating and physical activity. Community health assessments revealed that faith communities were not connected to other health resources and programs. Faithful Families has worked with over fourteen faith communities, impacting over 2,700 individuals with 54 policy and environmental changes. These include the creation of walking maps, community gardens, and community-wide physical activity facility usage policies. Participating faith communities have also created community-level coalitions made up of faith-based and community health organizations. Recommendations: Faithful Families will continue to engage faith communities in community health policies, environmental changes and coalition building. The program will refine its approach to better serve low-income populations using practice-based evidence, respecting the readiness and willingness of each faith community.