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Drs. Sharon Warren Cook, left, and Meeshay Williams-Wheeler compare notes at the research site, First Baptist Church of Enfield.
Keeping the
Faith
Family and consumer sciences researchers combine service with science to address childhood obesity in a rural North Carolina church community.
High cholesterol and cardiovascular disease claimed the life of Paulette Garrett’s father at age 49. Now, the Enfield, N.C., mother wants to make sure her 9-year-old daughter avoids a similar fate. That is why, she says, she gladly enrolled in an N.C. A&T community-based participatory research project. “Cholesterol, high blood pressure are hereditary. As she gets older, I want her to avoid that,” Garrett said, while enjoying a fresh-fruit cup in the fellowship hall of First Baptist Church of Enfield, a small, African-American church with a congregation from the town and surrounding Halifax County. It was early on a Sunday afternoon in March, following a youth-led worship service attended by an A&T research team, which had made the 2½-hour trek
from the University’s campus in Greensboro to join the worship service and enroll volunteers afterward. As one of 20 families in the Healthy Halifax Project, Garrett and her daughter will receive health assessments and instructions on healthy food preparation and physical activity. In return, she and other volunteers agree to visits from researchers and students in their homes at meal preparation times, and on food shopping trips. During these visits, team members will interview them while also providing research-based healthy lifestyle education. The Rev. Alvin Harmon and Assistant Minister Evangeline Grant welcomed A&T’s research team, they said, because its goals are in keeping with the church’s own.