Wellness for African Americans through Churches (WATCH) Project

The WATCH Project was a church-based study to improve nutrition, physical activity, and colorectal cancer screening among rural African American adults. The program compared the effectiveness of a lay health advisor intervention with an intervention that combined individualized newsletters and targeted videotapes. The newsletter and video intervention included four newsletters and videotapes mailed to the homes of participants over the course of nine months. The videos showed members of the community discussing and engaging in healthy behaviors, and newsletters addressed fruit and vegetable consumption, dietary fat intake, physical activity, and colorectal cancer screening. The lay health advisors provided education and promoted social support for behavioral change through the existing social networks within the community. Lay health advisors organized and conducted church-wide activities to spread information and enhance support for healthy eating, physical activity, and colorectal cancer screening.

The goal of the WATCH project is to improve diet and colorectal cancer screening rates among African American adults.

The interventions were compared using a randomized controlled trail to compare the newsletter and video intervention, the lay health advisor intervention, and a control group. The video and newsletter intervention significantly improved fruit and vegetable servings (p < 0.05) and recreational physical activity (p = 0.04), and increased fecal occult blood testing for colorectal cancer by 15% among participants aged 50 and older (p = 0.08). The lay health advisor intervention was not effective, possibly due to limited reach and diffusion within the community.