Project FRESH Takes Brighter Bites to Church

Brighter Bites launched a pilot program this fall with New Faith Church in the Central Southwest section of Houston called Project FRESH (Food Resources Encouraging Sustainable Health). Project FRESH represents the first time Brighter Bites has been implemented in a faith-based setting. The program began on September 11 and will run for eight weeks, ending on October 31.

Project FRESH came about because of two women: Brighter Bites Co-founder Dr. Shreela Sharma, PhD, RD, LD, who is also Associate Professor of Epidemiology at UTHealth School of Public Health in Houston, and Lorna Haughton McNeill, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor, Department of Health Disparities Research, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Dr. Sharma had always wanted to bring Brighter Bites into a church setting and when she heard that Dr. McNeil primarily studies the efficacy of improvements in diet and physical activity in African-American churches, she wondered if they might combine forces. Together they wrote a grant application for funds to launch a pilot. Their application was generously funded by the Duncan Family Institute for Cancer Prevention and Risk Assessment at MD Anderson Cancer Center and turned into Project FRESH.

The study, a Randomized Controlled Trial of 50 families who will receive Brighter Bites for eight weeks this fall and 50 families who will not, seeks to (1) determine the feasibility of recruiting families and implementing the Brighter Bites program in a Houston area food desert-located church and (2) evaluate the efficacy of Brighter Bites in increasing healthy diet and physical activity in participant families. The research team from MD Anderson recorded the baseline weight for all 100 participants before the program began.

Much like the Brighter Bites programs in schools, community centers, and camps, Project FRESH includes food access, nutrition education, and fun food experiences. In the church setting, the education component comes in the form of the “CATCH the Spirit” curriculum. CATCH the Spirit is the first faith-based toolkit adaptation of a successful, evidence-based school obesity prevention intervention (the CATCH program) for implementation in Christian churches. According to Brighter Bites Austin Program Coordinator Bethany Dawson, who developed CATCH the Spirit for her Master’s thesis at UTHealth School of Public Health, “The goal of CATCH the Spirit in Christian churches is to reinforce the importance of healthful behaviors in a scriptural context in order to engage not only the youth but the entire church community to develop a deeper spiritual connection to their health.” CATCH the Spirit is being taught at New Faith Children’s Church and Youth Church sessions throughout the duration of the Brighter Bites food distributions.

“So far,” says Ryan Ramphul, Project FRESH Program Coordinator, “the families who are participating in the program say they are enjoying it tremendously! When they come to pick up their food they are always excited to see what’s in the bags, and to tell me about things they cooked with the produce from the week prior. Even the volunteers and people in the control group share with me how happy they are to see health initiatives like this taking place in their community.”

We are happy to report that in 2017, all 100 families will receive Brighter Bites during the eight-week spring session.