Partnering with the faith-based African American community to collect health status data

The Colorado Clinical and Translational Science Institute, in partnership with the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center, is working with the Denver faith-based African American community to conduct a health survey using a community-based participatory research approach. The goal is to achieve a more accurate picture of the health status of residents and produce comprehensive and accurate community health profile data that can be used for setting research and intervention priorities. Community and university partners met over a three month period to jointly decide on research methods, data collection approaches, strategies for reaching residents who typically do not participate in land line surveys such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and dissemination activities. After considering the various priorities and needs of both the community and university partners, the following plan was formulated: random selection of Black churches stratified by church size, random selection of adult church congregants, involvement of church pastors and liaisons to ensure successful data collection and high response rates, and a target sample of 3000 respondents in order to achieve more accurate point estimates than what is possible via the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. This presentation will describe the community-based participatory research process that was used to honor the respective needs of community and university partners, preliminary survey findings, lessons learned, challenges encountered, potential uses of these data to inform policy and practice, and recommendations for future efforts related to undertaking community health surveillance activities.