# The FAITH! Trial:  A mHealth Intervention to Improve Cardiovascular Health Among African-Americans

> **NIH NIH R21** · MAYO CLINIC ROCHESTER · 2020 · $284,290

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) afflicts nearly 50% of all African-American (AA) adults, and they are 30% more
likely to die from CVD than the overall US population. Compared to non-Hispanic whites, AAs are 82% less
likely to meet the ideal levels for 5 or more of the cardiovascular (CV) health components that comprise the
American Heart Association (AHA) Life's Simple 7 (LS7). LS7 is an evidenced-based metric of 7 health-
promoting behaviors and biological risk factors that improves CV outcomes: physical activity, diet, smoking,
body mass index, blood pressure, total cholesterol, and glucose. AAs have poorer health status than whites in
every LS7 component except total cholesterol. Mobile health (mHealth) lifestyle interventions through digital
communication and devices are promising ways to improve CV health and outcomes among AAs; however,
there is a paucity of effective, culturally relevant, evidenced-based interventions available. The major goal of
our project is to apply a community-based participatory research approach to rigorously refine and test the
feasibility and preliminary efficacy of our existing CV health/wellness digital application (app) prototype to
improve CV health among AAs. The refined app will focus on promoting the LS7 framework with incorporation
of user-individualized and interpersonal features. We hypothesize that our behavioral theory-informed, app-
based, intervention will be feasible and improve CV health among AAs in faith communities from baseline to 6-
months post-intervention.
This R21 proposal aligns with the NIMHD's focus on “impacting the health determinants that contribute to poor
health outcomes and to health disparity conditions”. Building on our longstanding partnership with local AA
churches and preliminary work, we propose two aims. Aim 1 will refine our app to promote LS7 with inclusion
of user-individualized and interpersonal features. We will use a formative research process and qualitative
methods to refine the app within a focus group series with 15 AA adult community members. Primary
outcomes are app usability and user satisfaction. Aim 2 will assess the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of
the refined app for promoting LS7 among AA adults in faith communities by conducting a cluster randomized
controlled trial of 200 AA adults. Primary outcomes are change in LS7 score from baseline to 6-months post-
intervention and app engagement/usability. Secondary outcomes include the following psychosocial measures:
self-efficacy, self-regulation, social support, religiosity/spirituality, optimism and perceived stress. An
established community steering committee will provide input for all activities. Our project is innovative as our
mHealth lifestyle intervention integrates behavioral theory-informed and empirically-supported components to
influence LS7 among AAs. If successful, our results can pave the way for use of evidence-based mHealth tools
to increase prevalence of ideal CV he...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10020803
- **Project number:** 5R21MD013490-02
- **Recipient organization:** MAYO CLINIC ROCHESTER
- **Principal Investigator:** LaPrincess C Brewer
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $284,290
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-18 → 2021-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10020803

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10020803, The FAITH! Trial:  A mHealth Intervention to Improve Cardiovascular Health Among African-Americans (5R21MD013490-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10020803. Licensed CC0.

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