Fit body and soul: A church-based behavioral lifestyle program for diabetes prevention in African Americans

Faith-based initiatives for lifestyle change show promise in helping to promote healthy behaviors in African American communities. It has been suggested that faith communities and programs within faith communities can influence health care practices and health care planning especially in high risk, minority populations. African American individuals are more likely to attend and participate in faith-based services than Whites from similar backgrounds. Our proposed intervention, Fit Body and Soul, has been adopted and modified from the proven diabetes prevention program (DPP) lifestyle intervention program, and uses the church-community experiences of the "Body and Soul" study as a faith-based effort. The intervention has been developed keeping in mind the church mission and goal of being spiritually healthy and has adopted bible scripture to develop a 12-session intervention. In this article, we present the development of the church-based Fit Body and Soul behavioral lifestyle intervention using community-based participatory research in partnership with African American churches.