# DASH-ing to Heart Health: Supporting Low-Income African American Women with an Interactive "Meals that Heal" Resource Book

> **NIH NIH G08** · UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY · 2024 · $118,770

## Abstract

Although the DASH diet [Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension] has been shown to
significantly reduce the risk of hypertension and other cardiovascular disease risk factors, there
is a lack of available health information on how to follow a feasible DASH diet for low-income
African American women who may be at the most risk for hypertension because of poor social
determinants of health. The long-term goal of this project is to increase the accessibility and
acceptability of culturally- and economically-responsive dietary approaches to reduce
hypertension risk for low-income African American women. The overall goal of this project is to
create a useful and usable interactive resource book that increases awareness/knowledge of
hypertension and improves ease of following a DASH diet by providing culturally relevant and
low-cost DASH recipes that low-income African American women can utilize when making heart
healthy food choices. The specific aims are to: (1) evaluate how currently available DASH
recipes perform in terms of cultural relevance and economic feasibility; (2) describe what factors
influence adherence to the DASH diet; and (3) determine how effective an interactive resource
book is at increasing DASH knowledge and the likelihood of using DASH recipes. The first aim
will use an integrative review to synthesize related literature. The second aim will explore
barriers and facilitators to DASH adherence including dietary preferences and food budgetary
decision making. The third aim will evaluate the effectiveness of the resource through
community-based food demonstration workshops. This proposed project is innovative because
it focuses on adherence to DASH diet and low-income African American women, a group that is
disproportionately impacted by hypertension. The proposed project is significant because
findings will increase the availability of accessible and usable evidence-based health information
for health disparity populations. This knowledge has the potential to increase the adherence to
the DASH diet and overall effectiveness of existing interventions, which is critical to reducing
hypertension disparities.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10792148
- **Project number:** 1G08LM014412-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
- **Principal Investigator:** Brandi Michelle White
- **Activity code:** G08 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $118,770
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-01-01 → 2026-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10792148

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10792148, DASH-ing to Heart Health: Supporting Low-Income African American Women with an Interactive "Meals that Heal" Resource Book (1G08LM014412-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10792148. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*