Communities Interested in BHF

A Grant to Reduce Childhood Obesity in Your Community

BHF Program Overview:

Building Healthy Families (BHF) is a program that has demonstrated success in whole family health promotion and achieving and maintaining a healthy body weight. The program aims to support families in making sensible and sustainable changes to their eating and physical activity using research-tested behavior change strategies.

Program duration: The 12-month program includes an informational session for interested families, 12 weekly family sessions (2 hours each), and 6 refresher sessions (~90 minutes each).

Delivery Format: BHF is best delivered in-person in an accessible community space.

Session content: Families learn to set goals to create healthier lifestyles in a fun, interactive environment together.

Who should attend: Children between the ages of 6 and 12 years old with a BMI at or above the 95^th percentile are eligible to participate. Because BHF is a program designed for the whole family, parents/guardians and siblings of any age or weight status are encouraged to attend each session.

Cohort size: We recommend delivering the program to groups of about 6 to 10 families.

What the MW-PRC team will provide:

Training resources: We will provide an online training platform to train your community-based teams to deliver the BHF Program.

Family recruitment: Historically, we’ve found that the biggest challenge that communities face when implementing a family healthy weight program is recruiting families to participate. This project will provide you with technical support and guidance for recruitment by integrating with a local clinical partner’s electronic health record to identify eligible families and reach out to them via text message to offer enrollment in BHF. The research team will also provide the technology platform and manage the text messaging recruitment strategy.

Financial support: This funding opportunity will provide the support for the BHF Online resources package, necessary program supplies, and $10,000 to cover start-up costs.

Implementation support: Quarterly throughout the project, the research team will meet individually with your organization and in groups of similar community-based organizations who are also implementing BHF. We’ll identify barriers to recruitment and program implementation and help identify strategies to support you in successful program delivery. 

What you’ll need to be successful:

A program delivery organization: A local organization with a dedicated person/team to deliver BHF. Delivering BHF will require on average about 4 hours per week for 2 to 3 coordinators.

A clinical program recruitment organization:  A community health center or other clinical partner to develop a sustainable referral pipeline for the BHF program. The family recruitment strategy in this project will leverage the electronic health record in local community health centers to identify and reach out to eligible families. The organizations who will lead recruitment must be willing to partner with our research team on patient outreach.

Communities are responsible for identifying organizations to fill both roles.

Printable LOI description

Click HERE to submit

• What does my community need to offer BHF?
  • A strong interest in helping families and children with obesity to move more, eat more healthy foods, and get to a healthy body weight.
  • A lead community organization.
  • Community partners who can help find and enroll families that can benefit from BHF and community partners who can deliver the program. Successful applicants to this Mountain West Prevention Research Center RFA will need to have a community health center or other clinical partner with an electronic health record for recruitment.
  • Ideally, a community would have at least 2 partner organizations.
  • Partners can be from the local health department, hospital, school, extension office and/or recreation center.
  • A dietitian or individual with a background to teach families about nutrition, a health educator or someone with background in helping people change their behaviors, and someone with experience in physical activity promotion.
  • Submit a letter of intent!

• Do we have to have 2 organizations to apply?
  • We encourage at least two community organizations to work together to implement BHF, one to partner with the research team on the text messaging-based recruitment strategy and one to focus on delivering the program.
  • An important part of the Prevention Research Center project is our text-messaging based recruitment strategy to recruit families into BHF. Communities must have a clinical partner with an electronic health record to be eligible.
  • In your community, you could have one organization that could do both. If a community health center or other clinical organization can identify and recruit eligible families AND has the capacity to deliver the BHF program, it is possible to participate with this structure.

• What are these pre-application surveys in the Letter of Intent about?
  • The funding for this project comes from the CDC Prevention Research Centers. Our MW-PRC includes trying to figure out how different communities and organizations can adopt and sustain BHF. The surveys will help us understand the context of each organization.
  • Completing the surveys is required and we make it easy by sending a unique survey link to each person listed in the letter of intent. However, because we don’t want to influence your responses, the answers to the survey questions will not be used as part of the selection process.
  • All information you provide will be confidential. It will not be reported back to your organization or community, except in aggregate.

• Can the project lead ‘count’ as one of the two pre-application surveys from an organization?
  • Yes, if they are someone with decision making authority for the organization or will be involved in implementation of the recruitment or program delivery activities.

• Why do you want at least 2 people from each organization to be involved and complete the pre-application surveys?
  • We want to have a decision-maker and a “doer” from each organization involved so we know that the commitment to recruit families for BHF, and to deliver it, can be acted on. This decision-maker in an organization can make decisions on resources that will be used to recruit families or deliver BHF. The Doers, will implement and have a good sense of what is feasible based on their other work responsibilities.

• How will you help us to engage families, so we have enough people for a program?
  • Our team has expertise and success with text-messaging based outreach and recruitment for health behavior programs. Communities in this project will have the opportunity to learn about and use this approach in collaboration with the research team.

• What do you mean by ‘small towns’?
  • Small town or rural community has typically meant about 50,000 people or less, but we are willing to consider any small town or community where there is an absence of this type of program.

• Do we need a separate letter of intent for each organization that would be involved?
  • No, you just need to have a letter of intent from the organization that you consider to be the lead. You do need to have pre-application surveys for all organizations that plan to be involved.

• How many communities will be selected?
  • Up to 8 communities will be selected to implement BHF in their communities.

• How much support will communities receive?
  • All successful communities will receive $10,000 for program start up and implementation. Successful applicants will also participate in a community learning collaborative to support implementation and development of sustainability action plans for their program.

• How long will our community be involved in the project?
  • The start date will be in the Spring or Fall of 2025.
  • The PRC is funded through 2029. While we can only provide start up funding once, we will continue to support successful communities through the life of the PRC.
• How many cohorts or number of participants would be expected per grant? 
  • We will expect each community to deliver the program to 2 cohorts of 8-12 families in each.
  • The goal of the project is to support communities while they develop capacity to sustain the program over time. While the expectation is 2 cohorts, we hope that a community will continue to deliver BHF beyond that.

• Are there any plans to help communities sustain the program?
  • All communities will receive feedback and lessons learned during the project related to sustainability and potential payment models will be developed and shared across all participating communities.

• How do I manage the finances if I get a pilot?
  • Each community will need an organization that will manage the finances for supplies and equipment. We are happy to work with your community on this.

• Do we need any kind of credential to offer the program?
  • You don’t need to have any specific credentials, but we recommend a dietitian or individual with a background to teach families about nutrition, a health educator or someone with background in helping people change their behaviors, and someone with experience in physical activity promotion.
  • It would be great if these folks had some experience implementing activities with children (parks and recreation, YMCA, youth fitness instructor, etc).

• What does my community need to do if we are selected to offer BHF?
  • Communities that are selected to implement BHF are encouraged to plan to run 2-3 cohorts over 2 years.
  • Each cohort would be between 8-12 families (minimum of 5, maximum of 12 families).

• Can we do more than one cohort at a time if we want to?
  • Cohorts can run simultaneously or back-to-back. We recommend trying to run one cohort first to iron out any kinks.

• Do we have to limit the number of families to 12?
  • It would be best to limit to 12 families. As part of the family-based focus, we recommend all family members attend the program and parents are required to facilitate social support and interaction strategies. So, 12 families in one room could be 30 to 48 people. Even if you have the space for this many people, the BHF hands-on activities would make it very challenging to make sure everyone gets what they need from each session.

• What are the space needs for BHF?
  • A location that has meeting space for up to 40 individuals and a gym or large enough space for physical activity. BHF has been implemented at a university, community college, local high school, and a local YMCA, for example.
• Who gets the BHF Program: An interactive training and program materials?
  • The electronic program was built using a train-the trainer model. The electronic program will be available to all selected communities. This means all communities will have access to the effective BHF program and program materials. All selected communities will have assistance from the MW-PRC team to help you set up your communities account and learn to navigate the system.
  • There are also printed handbooks that go with the electronic program to help your staff navigate the new program.
• What is in the ‘BHF Program’?
  • The ‘turn-key’ program includes all training materials for you to learn how to deliver the BHF program. These training materials include videos and power points. There are also knowledge checks for all facilitators.
  • The electronic program also includes all the curriculum and family-facing materials (e.g. handouts, power point slides, etc) that you need to actually deliver BHF to families.
  • Lastly, the electronic program will have a data portal in which your facilitators can enter and track program data.
• What is the Learning Collaborative?
  • The program contains everything you need to run the BHF program, but we also know that communities might need additional support. Quarterly throughout the project, the research team will meet individually with your organization and in groups of similar community-based organizations who are also implementing BHF. We’ll identify barriers to recruitment and program implementation and help identify strategies to support you in successful program delivery.

REQUEST FOR COMMUNITY NARRATIVES: A Small Grant to Reduce Childhood Obesity in Your Community

 
Submitted Community Narratives will be reviewed using the Evaluation Criteria listed below. All selected communities will be expected to use the web-based training package and program materials to train staff and to deliver BHF to families in their community. We also require communities to be willing to participate, if selected, in a facilitated learning collaborative with other communities trying to figure out how best to deliver BHF in their communities. Finally, communities must include a clinical site or partner that is willing to work with the MW-PRC team to implement electronic health record-based recruitment and text messaging-based outreach.

Community Narrative: A 1000 word narrative that will be used to select communities to implement BHF. The narrative must address each of the following points:

1. Describe how childhood obesity fits within your community’s current identified needs.
2. In addition to our team’s text messaging recruitment strategy, briefly describe how you would plan to recruit families in to participate in BHF, including low-income families.
3. Briefly describe who would deliver BHF and the expertise of that person (people) to deliver this type of program (be sure to consider the nutrition, physical activity, and behavior change components of the program).
4. Describe where you would be able to host the program in your community. Identify a potential location for implementation that has room for the education sessions and the physical activities (gym, multipurpose room, etc).
5. Briefly describe how you anticipate your community sustaining BHF beyond the life of the MW-PRC project.
6. Confirm your team’s willingness to participate in a collaborative group with other communities trying to figure out how best to deliver BHF.

1. Demonstrated local priority or need.
2. Ability of community to develop recruitment methods in collaboration with a clinical partner.
3. Ability of community to deliver BHF.
4. Plan for sustainability.
5. Willingness to participate in the learning collaborative.
6. Likelihood of success in recruiting families and implementing BHF with high quality.

Informational Webinar: We encourage the lead organization and other partners to attend the information session on December 12th. Zoom information will be shared when you confirm your proposed time.This will be a Q&A format to support you in writing your narrative. 

Deadline: Please submit community narratives by January 3, 2025. To submit your narrative, click this link and upload a word document or pdf.

Click here to download a PDF copy of the Request for Community Narrative