Men on the Move: A participatory approach to enhancing nutrition access and information within a rural African American community

Rural African American communities have some of the highest rates of cardiovascular disease and obesity. Men on the Move (MOTM) is a community based participatory research project addressing individual, social and environmental factors contributing to these health risks. The individual level interventions include community-wide cooking demonstrations, family dinner nights, taste testings, and bulletin boards. To address environmental factors (access), MOTM advocates for changes in food offerings in local grocery stores and created community and production produce gardens that distribute to individual residents and local vendors. Baseline and mid-intervention community-wide surveys were conducted with 400 intervention community residents and 400 comparison community residents. Chi-square tests indicate that when analyzed against the comparison community, intervention community residents participating in MOTM individual nutrition activities and accessing produce from the gardens were more likely to have knowledge about the importance of healthy eating. In addition, they reported eating less processed food, less fast food, less salt, and larger portions of fruits and vegetables. They also reported eating more locally grown food, indicated that they were better able to provide food for their family, and spent less money on food. From baseline to mid-intervention, the intervention community showed decreases in hypertension and BMI, while the comparison community showed increases in both. The differences between communities were statistically significant for both. Logistic regression analyses indicated that exposure to and participation in the intervention were significant in predicting both hypertension and BMI. This suggests that multilevel interventions to promote nutrition are promising for African American rural communities.