Church-based health promotion: Promoting physical activity through the church.

摘要

Physical activity has been proven to have numerous health benefits. In spite of these benefits, certain segments of the US population such as women, rural residents, and African Americans generally report lower levels of leisure-time physical activity. Although much is known about individual-level factors that may positively impact physical activity, comparatively less is known about the role of social and environmental-level factors towards promoting physical activity. It is therefore important to understand which factors might be important to promote physical activity among these largely sedentary segments of the population.;Previous studies have found that social support is important towards increasing physical activity. Research has also shown that churches provide various types of social support for different health promotion programs. However, studies suggesting the importance of social support towards physical activity have been conducted outside of the church, and thus we do not know which domains of church-based social support are most important in driving physical activity.;The current research entitled "Church-Based Health Promotion: Promoting Physical Activity Through the Church" analyzed cross-sectional data collected from male and female rural residents to determine whether or not two types of church-based social support (informational and instrumental support) were related to meeting public health recommendations for physical activity and/or performing at least some versus no amount of physical activity. The results revealed that instrumental social support was associated with performing at least "some" amount of physical activity. Informational social support was not significantly associated with either meeting recommendations for physical activity or performing some versus no amount of activity. However, among those who meet physical activity recommendations, the majority of them indicated that they received most forms of informational or instrumental social support.