Awolowo, Yawah

Clark, Debra

Robinson, Darlene

English

North Georgia College & State University: Digital Commons

Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship
Volume 9 | Issue 1 Article 10
May 2016
Community Perspectives | Our Journey into a
CBPR Project: Health and Nutrition Solutions in
the Alabama Black Belt
Yawah Awolowo
Mahalah Farms
Debra Clark
Health and Wellness Education Center
Darlene Robinson
Imagine Me Youth Development Program
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Recommended Citation
Awolowo, Yawah; Clark, Debra; and Robinson, Darlene (2016) "Community Perspectives | Our Journey into a CBPR Project: Health
and Nutrition Solutions in the Alabama Black Belt," Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 , Article 10.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/jces/vol9/iss1/10
Vol. 9, No. 1 —JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND SCHOLARSHIP—Page 77
Our Journey into a CBPR Project: Health and 
Nutrition Solutions in the Alabama Black Belt
Project UNITED is a federally funded grant 
that addresses obesity issues in the Alabama Black 
Belt. The Black Belt represents some of the poorest 
counties in the United States and is plagued with 
chronic health conditions—obesity, diabetes, high 
blood pressure, cancer—which are predominantly 
found in African Americans. Community leaders 
from the Black Belt Community Foundation, a 
501(c)3 nonprofit corporation whose purpose 
is to help improve the quality of life of residents 
in the Alabama Black Belt, participated in the 
project as community health scholars. Project 
UNITED partnered community health scholars 
and academic scholars to develop proposals that 
addressed obesity issues in rural communities. 
A team of three community health scholars and 
three academic scholars collaborated and 
formed, Home Sweet Home, a two-year, $50,000, 
multigenerational obesity intervention in Greene 
and Sumter counties. This paper provides 
reflections from the three community health 
scholars regarding their experience in a community 
based participatory research (CBPR) project. 
The paper is presented as first person 
testimonials describing the experiences of 
each participant.
Darlene Robinson, Greene County 
 Being one who is always looking for ways to 
improve myself and my community, I took a step 
of faith in response to the invitation I received 
to become a community health scholar with 
Project UNITED. I also believed I would acquire 
knowledge that would help my community. In the 
community my mission is to improve everyday 
life of parents and their children. Even though my 
plate was already full, I felt it would be an 
opportunity to find ways to improve myself and 
my community. 
The Project UNITED journey introduced us to 
individuals from around the state who also wanted 
to improve themselves and their communities. I 
could tell the training was well thought out, as we 
visited a small garden at a rural school where the 
youth were being introduced to growing their own 
foods. This was the Project UNITED pilot project. 
Educating our community about healthy lifestyle 
changes is very important and we learned ways to 
take it home. Project UNITED brought professors 
from the University of Alabama and community 
people together as a learning tool that showed that 
we all share the same passion of making Alabama a 
healthier place to live.
The circle was complete when our team 
formed. We had three members from the 
community and three members from academia, 
with a mission of curtailing obesity by educating 
ourselves. As a group we merged our thoughts, 
hashed out our ideas, made a plan, found an 
audience—the preschoolers and their parents—
and formed a roadmap to get us where we wanted 
to go. We named our program “Home Sweet 
Home.” Our mission was to introduce and teach 
a new way of thinking about eating. We sought 
to change current statistics that says we are an 
obese society.
If you’re busy, think you have that all you 
can handle, feel you know all you need to know, 
then CBPR is probably for you, because it takes all 
you’re doing and all you can handle and turns it 
into a mission that you’ve been on all the time but 
gives you directions to get to a better place. Then it 
will not just be your idea of what the community 
needs, but the community will be able to tell you 
what they want.
Debra Clark, Sumter County
In 2013, I was chosen by the Black Belt 
Community Foundation to be a community 
Yawah Awolowo, Debra Clark, and Darlene Robinson
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Awolowo et al.: Community Perspectives | Our Journey into a CBPR Project: Health
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2016
Vol. 9, No. 1 —JOURNAL OF COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND SCHOLARSHIP—Page 78
health scholar. This was because of my health-
related awareness work at the Health and Wellness 
Education Center (HWEC) Disease Management 
Program. At the first meeting my first thought 
was “Why am I here?” realizing that I did’t have 
time to take on an additional project. But my 
second thought was “how can I not participate?” 
considering the impact this project could have 
on my community. Certainty, it is through strong 
community partnerships with local agencies that 
has made HWEC successful. The agency has made 
great strides to implement initiatives to address 
obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other 
chronic illnesses to improve the health of local 
residents.
As a result of this project, I
1.  Was invited to present a paper entitled 
“Fighting Obesity for the Health of 
It” at the Rural Health Conference in 
Tuscaloosa in 2013.
2.  Received the Rural Heroes Award from 
the UA College of Community Health 
Sciences.
3. Was able to expand the Jump To It (what is 
it?) program for additional communities.
4.  Produced a simple handout on the traffic 
light diet to promote healthy eating for 
distribution at health fairs and community 
events.
5.  Have witnessed the greatest impact within 
my own family. My 5-year old grandson 
was never introduced to yogurt, but now 
eats yogurt and encourages his mom to 
“add stuff ” to make it good.
Although this fight has been tedious and 
time consuming, I must admit that rewards have 
been greater than the struggle. The program has 
helped build capacity and strengthen my agency by 
connecting me with a team of experts with genuine 
concern and interest, which correlates with the 
agency’s mission of promoting healthier lifestyles 
through education and prevention.
 
Yawah Awolowo, Sumter County 
As a community health scholar participating 
in Project UNITED, I have enjoyed adding to 
what I already knew about health-related issues 
and unhealthy eating. I nurtured my family in 
an organic, self-sufficient, natural homebirth/
home schooled permaculture environment and 
have sustained five seriously committed years of 
organic farming on a 66-acre, family-owned farm. 
My journey with CBPR and the development 
of a partnership with academic researchers not 
only expands my baseline knowledge, but the 
collaborative process has also allowed me to 
continue to put into practice my knowledge in a 
way to benefit my community. I have learned that 
while academic researchers are very knowledgeable 
about health and treatment, I also bring a great 
deal of knowledge about nutrition and health. 
Additionally, I have expertise about the rural 
community where I live, which I know is valuable 
for eliminating obesity in this community.
My participation in Project UNITED 
enlightened my interest in heart disease and 
obesity, major health concerns in my family. My 
mother, who was 90 years young developed heart 
disease. She had no hypertension, diabetes, no 
medicines for her entire life. The doctors informed 
the family that there was a blockage in one of her 
heart valves; surgery was necessary to remove the 
blockage. One of the major reasons I chose to be 
involved as a community health scholar in Project 
UNITED was because I watched my 90-year-old 
mother go through heart surgery and witnessed 
her spectacular recovery as she completely 
changed her eating habits. The other reason for 
my interest is because there are so many people in 
my family who have serious health conditions. My 
sister had surgery two weeks prior to my mother 
and my daughter has also had medical issues. 
For these reasons, my desire has been fueled to 
establish alternative eating habits as a means to 
prevent disease, especially with kids at an early 
age. I believe this can be done by letting them be 
involved with the purchase, preparation, cooking, 
and serving of good healthy foods.
Project UNITED was the right program 
for my personal and community needs to learn 
more about prevention of this disease in our 
community. I realized that the cultural normality 
of food intake always consists of some type of 
animal products on a daily basis that cause 
blockages and slow down the process of the heart 
pumping blood and oxygen.
INVOLVEMENT IN HOME SWEET HOME 
PROJECT
Debra Clark
 As a community health scholar I have been 
able to work with a team of people who share my 
interest of eliminating diseases through education 
and awareness. We met as a group utilizing a 
tool called speed dating to develop a professional 
relationship/marriage that has grown into a big 
happy family. Consider the three-legged stool; 
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one cannot stand without the other. Each of us 
brings so much to table that I wonder how we 
could have been so close without ever crossing 
paths. Nevertheless, we have bonded and now look 
for ways to improve our efforts by enhancing our 
writing skills and seeking additional resources to 
promote sustainability to enhance our community 
for a better future. Community health scholars: 
What better name can you give to such individuals 
who are a community’s first choice when it comes 
to health care. We are the movers and shakers in 
our community. 
Darlene Robinson 
Home Sweet Home is our project. We 
named it, we designed the program, we listened 
to the community, we respected the community, 
we educated ourselves, and we educated the 
community. The program was not handed to us; it 
was made by us for us with the mission in mind 
of changing lifestyles by teaching our families how 
to spend time together, talk to each other, share 
with others, cook with love, train our children 
how to prepare a dish and making home truly 
Home Sweet Home. The mission of introducing 
new ways of cooking to our parents was well 
received. The preschoolers enjoyed the experience 
and the parents appreciated the information 
because our eating habits have led to many health 
improvements. The traffic light playing cards (red 
light = foods to avoid; eat; yellow = sometimes 
foods; green = go foods) were designed as a way 
for families to learn what foods to stop eating, 
for example cautiously eating the yellow foods 
and eating lots of all the green foods. Each family 
received a deck of Home Sweet Home cards 
designed by the team.
The program was introduced in the communi-
ties represented by the community health scholars. 
The team was glued together by a passion to make 
a difference, and we believe it is the start of great 
things to come. Our coming together was not 
by accident; it was time for academia and the 
community to unite on a mission of bringing the 
idea of healthy eating to the community.
Yawah Awolowo 
Project UNITED has been a perfect learning 
catalyst. One of the major goals of the project 
was to partner community leaders with academic 
researchers to develop and pilot test an obesity 
intervention program. We spent the year getting 
to know each other’s interests and personalities 
with an emphasis on building trust and working 
toward sustaining a lasting relationship. This 
was important to me because I have had several 
business encounters where I have shared ideas 
and people have either ignored or taken my ideas. 
These experiences have made me wary to trust 
experts sometimes. Therefore, any emphasis on 
building trust and sustainability are going to be 
important for me and my community. 
I eventually ended up working with a team 
of six. We talked about potential projects based 
on our interests where we would be competitive 
for funding internally. We also evaluated the 
best approaches to write the grant using all our 
strengths. As a member of the team, I also earned 
my IRB certificate, which builds on the training I 
received in medical ethics and research. We titled 
our submission: Home Sweet Home, with a focus 
on home food environment. This project addresses 
obesity in the age group 2 to 5 years (pre-k). Our 
primary goal was to get 2-5-year-old children, 
along with their parents, to learn how to choose 
good, healthy produce, prepare food in a clean 
area, practice safety measures, make it a child 
friendly environment, create their own recipes 
using the things they like to eat, and spark their 
interest in healthy eating habits from an early age. 
Thankfully, our collaborative proposal received 
funding for one year through a competitive 
internal grant process.
As I reflect on the past year of my role as a 
Community health scholar and the value that 
CBPR has added to my life, I believe that the 
time invested in the program will save lives in my 
community. And that is time well spent. As the 
program began its journey into the community, 
the best began to happen with children and the 
parents. We prepared familiar food with new twist, 
collards greens with no meat; to make home-
cooked foods with fresh herbs and olive oil; the 
children preparing salads, constructing parfaits 
and serving their parents and grandparents; 
providing chef hats and aprons and gifts for 
families to continue their healthy journeys.
About the Authors
Yawah Awolowo is an organic farmer and chef 
at Mahalah Farms in Cuba (Sumter County), 
Alabama. Debra Clark is founder and executive 
director of the Health and Wellness Education 
Center in Livingston (Sumter County), Alabama. 
Darlene Robinson is founder of Imagine Me 
Youth Development Program in Greene County, 
Alabama.
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Awolowo et al.: Community Perspectives | Our Journey into a CBPR Project: Health
Published by Nighthawks Open Institutional Repository, 2016


Community Perspectives | Our Journey into a CBPR Project: Health and Nutrition Solutions in the Alabama Black Belt

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Community Perspectives | Our Journey into a CBPR Project: Health and Nutrition Solutions in the Alabama Black Belt

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