Learning Objective #1: Describe two ways in which community members can participate in designing health promotion programs

Learning Objective #2: Discuss benefits and challenges of fostering community participation in the design of health promotion programs

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Healthy Weigh/El camino saludable (HW) is a community-based participatory research (CBPR) and service/service-learning program in a primarily low-income, Hispanic and African American community, that includes bilingual and monolingual Spanish and English speakers. HW helps families adopt healthy eating and activity patterns that enable them to attain/maintain healthy weights. The program includes nutrition and physical activity classes, family meals with directed meal conversations, child care, and transportation. Funded through a United Way of Metropolitan Tarrant County obesity prevention grant and supported by in-kind contributions from Texas Christian University, HW involves these key partners: Harris School of Nursing, Department of Nutritional Sciences, a faith-based community center, Tarrant Area Food Bank, students (nursing, nutrition/dietetics, kinesiology, movement science, social work, and medicine), and most importantly, members of the target community. CBPR and community health nursing principles demand building and sustaining collaborative partnerships with community members. Community members contributed to designing Phase 1, a 12-week intervention, by participating in four focus groups. Phase 1 participants were encouraged to join a Health Action Group (HAG) to sustain HW. HAG members participated in designing a 6-week Phase 2 pilot and an 8-week Phase 2 program. Benefits of community member participation (CMP) included improved program design, offering the program in ways acceptable to participants, active engagement of community members in program implementation, creation of trust and networks for continued community programming, and effective participant recruitment. Challenges of CMP included initially gaining community trust, working cross-culturally and bilingually, teaching HAG members how to be actively engaged in program design including evaluation design, and fostering partnerships among all stakeholders (researchers, community members, students, and agency personnel). This presentation discusses these benefits and challenges, recruiting community members for focus groups and HAG, and successes and failures in developing a working HAG.