Psychologists engaged in public health research and intervention will become more involved in multiple intervention programming approaches. Managing innovation and complexity is a challenge when the team members come from different disciplines, organizational cultures and research perspectives. This report captures some of those challenges with a participatory, capacity-building, community-base...

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 f...

CONTEXT Many encourage service learning and health advocacy training in medical student education, but related evaluation is limited. OBJECTIVES To assess (1) impact of a required community health advocacy training for medical students on student attitudes, knowledge, and skills; (2) student characteristics associated with higher advocacy knowledge and skills; and (3) perspectives of communit...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that community-based environmental change intervention prevents undesirable weight gain in children. METHOD The method used in this study was a two-year, non-randomized, controlled trial (2003-2005) using community-based participatory methodology in three diverse cities in Massachusetts: one intervention and two socio-demographi...

BACKGROUND There is increasing interest in the role of close-to-community providers in supporting universal health coverage, but questions remain about the best approaches to supporting and motivating these providers, and the optimal package they can deliver indifferent contexts and support required. We report on the experiences of different health providers involved in a community based interv...

Adolescents with cerebral palsy and spina bifida report restricted interactions with peers and gaps in social support. A pilot online support intervention offered interactions with peers. Five mentors with cerebral palsy or spina bifida and 22 adolescents with the same disabilities met weekly online for 25 group sessions over six months. Participants completed quantitative measures of lonelines...

In a previous report, we demonstrated the efficacy of an intervention to promote colorectal cancer screening among African Americans in a controlled community intervention trial. Participants in the intervention, named EPICS (Educational Program to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening), were twice as likely to be screened after six months as those in the control group. In the current project, w...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the impact of a 2-year programme for community-based delivery of sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) on intermittent preventive treatment during pregnancy coverage, antenatal clinic attendance and pregnancy outcome. METHODS Fourteen intervention and 12 control villages in the catchment areas of Chikwawa and Ngabu Government Hospitals, southern Malawi, were selected. Village-b...