Churches play a major role in providing social support to address
health inequities within Black communities, in part by
connecting members to key organizations and services. While
public health has a history of disseminating interventions in
faith communities, little work has explored the use of crowdsourcing
to tailor interventions to the unique culture of each
church community. Following Community Based Participatory
Research principles, we partnered with two predominantly
Black churches, and report on a series of three participatory
design sessions with nine participants. We developed a novel
storyboarding method to explore how crowdsourcing could
promote health in these faith-based communities. Our findings
characterize existing supports within the church community,
and how church social structures impact member access to
these supports. We further identify motivations to engage with
a church-situated health application, and how these motivations
translate to crowdsourcing tasks. Finally, we discuss
considerations for public health crowdsourcing tasks.
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Black Church and Liberal Arts Institutions: Forming Reciprocal Relationships for Thriving Urban Communities and Churches
Academic institutions engaged in partnerships with the Black Church, including small, independent, under-resourced churches as well as historically Black denominational churches, and other under-resourced faith-based organizations, are encouraged to consider collaborative educational opportunities around the issues of strategic financial sustainability and short and long-term stewardship. Four highly community-engaged academics offer a thought-experiment starting with their observations and experiences with respect to the need for such partnerships, and how these kinds of collaborations may be able to help strengthen the Black Church, in all its forms and faith-based communities and ground them for greater advocacy for demanding systemic and structural change.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1824267
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10278142
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Metropolitan Universities
- Volume:
- 31
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1047-8485
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 181 to 196
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.18060/24058
