Colorectal cancer disproportionately affects African Americans across Texas and within Tarrant County. Colorectal cancer can be largely prevented by healthy nutrition and physical activity habits throughout life. This project will help African American residents ages 20 – 50 reduce their risk of colorectal cancer by helping them adopt healthier nutrition and exercise habits. Our goal is to reach out to 5000 African American residents, and have at least 500 implement the program.

We will reach out to them through churches and community college campuses through on-site promotion and recruitment efforts. . We will bring a new program proven effective in helping people improve their nu...

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Colorectal cancer disproportionately affects African Americans across Texas and within Tarrant County. Colorectal cancer can be largely prevented by healthy nutrition and physical activity habits throughout life. This project will help African American residents ages 20 – 50 reduce their risk of colorectal cancer by helping them adopt healthier nutrition and exercise habits. Our goal is to reach out to 5000 African American residents, and have at least 500 implement the program.

We will reach out to them through churches and community college campuses through on-site promotion and recruitment efforts. We will bring a new program proven effective in helping people improve their nutrition and exercise habits to Tarrant County. The program provides individualized education and coaching delivered by email, making it very convenient and accessible for busy people. The program offers three different modules, each taking three months to complete.

The modules include: 1) increasing physical activity, 2) increasing fruits and vegetables, or 3) decreasing fats and added sugars. Participants may pick and choose the module(s) most relevant to them. The program is designed to be low cost, and need limited staffing for implementation.

This project is unique in several ways. First, the intervention we are bringing to Tarrant County was designed to be implemented through work places. We are going to implement it through churches and community colleges, expanding the types of settings where the program is implemented. Finding ways to deliver health improvement interventions via email is particularly important in preparing for the future. Today’s young adults are tomorrow’s tech-savvy and tech-dependent middle age adults. It is critical to start now to develop and implement health improvement interventions that will be relevant into the future.

Ideally, this program could be implemented through a number of different settings. For instance, health care providers could include the ALIVE! intervention when counseling patients needing to improve their exercise and nutrition habits – particularly those citing time and cost as barriers to other health improvement programs. Most importantly, the low cost and ease of implementing this program makes it a good choice for helping Tarrant County and Texas help our residents improve their nutrition and exercise habits in order to have a healthier tomorrow.

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