Background
In light of the scarcity of culturally tailored mobile health (mHealth) lifestyle interventions for African Americans, we designed and pilot tested the Fostering African-American Improvement in Total Health (FAITH!) App in a community-based participatory research partnership with African American churches to promote cardiovascular health and wellness in this population.
Objective
This report presents the results of a formative evaluation of the FAITH! App from participants in an intervention pilot study.
Methods
We included 2 semistructured focus groups (n=4 and n=5) to explore participants’ views on app functionality, utility, and satisfaction as well as its impact on healthy lifestyle change. Sessions were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, and qualitative data were analyzed by using general inductive analysis to generate themes.
Results
In total, 6 overarching themes emerged among the 9 participants: overall impression, content usefulness, formatting, implementation, impact, and suggestions for improvement. Underpinning the themes was a high level of agreement that the intervention facilitated healthy behavioral change through cultural tailoring, multimedia education modules, and social networking. Suggestions for improvement were streamlining the app self-monitoring features, prompts to encourage app use, and personalization based on individuals’ cardiovascular risk.
Conclusions
This formative evaluation found that the FAITH! App had high reported satisfaction and impact on the health-promoting behaviors of African Americans, thereby improving their overall cardiovascular health. Further development and testing of the app among African Americans is warranted.
Trial Registration
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03084822; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03084822.
The College Health and Wellness Study: Baseline Correlates of Overweight among African Americans
