Church, Extension and Academic Partners Empowering Healthy Families

The project will address health disparities via a community-engaged approach in partnership with black churches. The long-term goals of this integrated project are to: 1) prevent and reduce childhood obesity through improved parenting practices and home environment related to obesity; 2) expand Extension capacity for community-engaged research and collaborative programming with faith-based organizations; 3) enhance Extension strategies for recruiting and training community volunteers to extend Extension reach; and 4) train future health professionals to provide culturally appropriate collaborative community-based health programs. The project will target the school-aged subset (ages 6-11, first through fifth grade) of the USDA target age range of ages 2-19. The 14-month randomized control trial design of the research component will generate new knowledge regarding effectiveness of a integrated family-based intervention enhanced with social and environmental (church) support to prevent obesity in school-aged children. The research design with a financial literacy active control condition and the primary nutrition and physical activity intervention being tested meets two needs expressed by the community partner and allows rigorous evaluation of both Extension programs. It is hypothesized that parents in the intervention group will have higher levels of self-efficacy for obesity-prevention behaviors, parenting practices related to food and physical activity, improved home food and physical activity. The long term impact is to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity.