Publications by authors named "Dana Lavender"
Background: Poor mental health is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among Black men in the United States. Efforts to improve mental health among Black men have been hampered by a lack of access and utilization of mental health services. Physical activity and social networks have been shown to improve mental health.
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- * The program utilized screening tools to identify social needs among participants and connected them to community resources, resulting in a significant reduction in reported social needs by 12 and 24 weeks.
- * Participants showed improvement in cardiovascular risk factors, as indicated by an increase in the Life's Simple 7 (LS7) score, which assesses heart health strategies, despite the initial lack of correlation with their social needs at the start.
Black American men have worse cardiovascular health compared with their White counterparts, yet are highly underrepresented in clinical trials. In 2020, Black men were recruited to participate in Black Impact, a community-based lifestyle intervention to increase cardiovascular health. Due to the research pause during the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a virtual community engagement (VCE) process was co-designed with community stakeholders and evaluated for its effect on retention for the clinical trial.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Higher cardiovascular health scores, using American Heart Association's (AHA) Life's Simple 7 (LS7), have been associated with lower risk of cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and mortality among all racial/ethnic groups. Nationally, Black men have the lowest levels of LS7. Thus, a study was conducted to evaluate the impact of a community-based team lifestyle change program on LS7 among Black men.
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