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Recruitment and Participation of African American Men in Church-Based Health Promotion Workshops

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Abstract

Health promotion interventions in African American communities are frequently delivered in church settings. The Men’s Prostate Awareness Church Training (M-PACT) intervention aimed to increase informed decision making for prostate cancer screening among African American men through their churches. Given the significant proportion and role of women in African American churches, the M-PACT study examined whether including women in the intervention approach would have an effect on study outcomes compared with a men-only approach. The current analysis discusses the men’s participation rates in the M-PACT intervention, which consisted of a series of 4 bimonthly men’s health workshops in 18 African American churches. Data suggest that once enrolled, retention rates for men ranged from 62 to 69 % over the workshop series. Among the men who were encouraged to invite women in their lives (e.g., wife/partner, sister, daughter, friend) to the workshops with them, less than half did so (46 %), suggesting under-implementation of this “health partner” approach. Finally, men’s participation in the mixed-sex workshops were half the rate as compared to the men-only workshops. We describe recruitment techniques, lessons learned, and possible reasons for the observed study group differences in participation, in order to inform future interventions to reach men of color with health information.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the American Cancer Society (RGST-10-113-01-CPPB). Many thanks to our community partners: Access to Wholistic and Productive Living Institute, Inc., and Community Ministry of Prince George’s County for their active role in church recruitment, training lay educators, and guidance in customizing the intervention to faith based communities in Prince George’s County, Maryland. We thank Andrew Perrin for his assistance with data entry and table preparation. Most of all, we acknowledge all the churches, community health advisors, and volunteers that participated and supported this research project to educate men about prostate cancer and early detection.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Behavioral and Community Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, 2369 School of Public Health Building (255), College Park, MD, 20742, USA

    Darlene R. Saunders, Cheryl L. Holt, Daisy Le & Min Qi Wang

  2. Community Ministry Prince of George’s County, Upper Marlboro, MD, USA

    Jimmie L. Slade & Alma Savoy

  3. Access to Wholistic and Productive Living Institute, Inc., Lanham, MD, USA

    Bettye Muwwakkil & Ralph Williams

  4. Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Tony L. Whitehead

  5. University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Michael J. Naslund

Authors
  1. Darlene R. Saunders
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  2. Cheryl L. Holt
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  3. Daisy Le
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  4. Jimmie L. Slade
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  5. Bettye Muwwakkil
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  6. Alma Savoy
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  7. Ralph Williams
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  8. Tony L. Whitehead
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  9. Min Qi Wang
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  10. Michael J. Naslund
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Cheryl L. Holt.

Additional information

This study was approved by the University of Maryland Institutional Review Board (12-0095).

The clinical trials.gov registration number for this study is NCT021317.

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Saunders, D.R., Holt, C.L., Le, D. et al. Recruitment and Participation of African American Men in Church-Based Health Promotion Workshops. J Community Health 40, 1300–1310 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-015-0054-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-015-0054-9

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