Each faith community completes a Pre-Faith Community Assessment to help determine what policy and environmental changes lay leaders can make to support their members’ health.

Program staff work with each faith community to implement at least one policy and one environmental change to support their members’ health. The nine-session Faithful Families Eating Smart and Moving More curriculum intentionally provides discussion time for participants to assess their community’s strengths, assets, and needs and brainstorms ways they can make appropriate and desired changes.

Resources and technical assistance will be provided to help each faith community adopt policy and environmental supports to create and sustain long term change. Faith Community Assessments are administered annually to measure success.

Faith communities have:

  • Established policies to serve water and/or unsweetened beverages at all events.
  • Re-paved parking lots to serve as a walking track.
  • Established guidelines that all meals offered at the faith community must follow healthy food guidelines.
  • Integrated physical activity breaks for all meetings.
  • Established community gardens.
  • Provided space and time for breastfeeding.
  • Established blood pressure monitoring stations for community use.