HIV Prevention and Education: Leadership and Implications for African-American Churches

This paper illustrates use of John Kotter’s eight-stage process for creating change through leadership its potential for aiding African-American churches in addressing rising HIV/AIDS rates. The focus is on churches due to their large influence on the African-American community. Knowing that there are multiple influences surrounding HIV/AIDS, it is useful to highlight how certain ideological and theological factors are contributing to the current state of African-American churches work to increase HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention, and education

MUCH MORE THAN READING, WRITING AND ARITHMETIC: HEALTH LITERACY DEVELOPMENT AMONGST 16-18 YEAR OLDS IN AN URBAN COMMUNITY

Health literacy, including eHealth literacy, has emerged as a research topic of interest when addressing barriers to the proper use of and access to healthcare resources, materials, and systems. Health literacy levels are often inadequate for young adults and youth (Kansas Head Start Association, 2012; Kutner et al., 2006) and should be improved to prepare them to navigate and utilize the healthcare system properly as adults. This preparation period is a timely call to action, as COVID-19 has drastically changed our lives since 2020. Health literacy knowledge is pertinent as youth learn how to navigate COVID information, resources, and guidelines. As high school students emerge into adults and have increased autonomy over their healthcare, this is an appropriate time to prime them on how to properly use and navigate the healthcare system through health literacy instruction (Gray et al., 2005; Manganello & Shone, 2013; Steinberg, 2005). As the current high school curriculum within the contextual setting does not include health literacy instruction, the intervention provided eHealth literacy and navigating the healthcare system instruction centered on COVID-19, while assessing outcomes for 16-to18-year-olds

Youth Ambassadors Reaching Out (YARO): Lessons learned from the implementation of a youth-based cancer education program

We know that many factors contribute to the exacerbation of cancer health disparities. These inequities observed in adulthood may have originated from behaviors occurring in early adolescence. We believe that increasing awareness of cancer prevention in youth may help reduce future disparities. Our community partners identified a need for youth-oriented cancer prevention and helped design the pilot Youth Ambassadors Reaching Out (YARO) program. YARO provided cancer prevention and health disparities education and exposure to health careers to 73 middle school students between 2012-2016. YARO included didactic sessions (health disparities, smoking prevention, physical activity, nutrition), a cancer center tour, and Photovoice project. Students were encouraged to serve as ambassadors by sharing lessons learned with others. Participants demonstrated increases in cancer prevention knowledge during the program. Evaluation data revealed that students served as ambassadors by sharing information with others about healthy behaviors, improving their own health habits, and volunteering in their communities

Participatory evaluation of a community–academic partnership to inform capacity-building and sustainability

The Tampa Bay Community Cancer Network (TBCCN) was formed as a partnership comprised of committed community based organizations (grassroots, service, health care organizations) and a National Cancer Institute designated cancer center working together to reduce cancer health disparities. Adhering to principles of community-based participatory research, TBCCN’s primary aims are to develop and sustain outreach, training, and research programs that aim to reach medically underserved, multicultural and multilingual populations within the Tampa Bay tri-county area. Using a participatory evaluation approach, we recently evaluated the partnerships’ priorities for cancer education and outreach; perspectives on the partnerships’ adherence to CBPR principles; and suggestions for sustaining TBCCN and its efforts. The purpose of this paper is to describe implementation and outcomes of this participatory evaluation of a community/academic partnership, and to illustrate the application of evaluation findings for partnership capacity-building and sustainability. Our evaluation provides evidence for partners’ perceived benefits and realized expectations of the partnership and illustrates the value of ongoing and continued partnership assessment to directly inform program activities and build community capacity and sustainability