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Equipping Faith-Based Communities for Cancer Support Ministry: A Pilot Study of Cancer Support Training for Members of African-American Churches in the USA

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Abstract

Church–academic partnerships focused on cancer, generally target cancer screening and prevention, with few focusing explicitly on cancer survivors. With the population of cancer survivors steadily increasing, highlighting the value of faith-based cancer support ministry is paramount. However, many churches may not have the resources to integrate relevant cancer support ministry and may need to identify ways to reach cancer survivors. We piloted cancer support training to help church members to start a cancer support ministry with African-American churches in Milwaukee, WI. We sought to measure the feasibility of a two-day training workshop to build the capacity of churches through recruiting and training church members on how to foster social support and to disseminate cancer information and resources throughout their churches. Our study was guided by the social networks and social support framework, which we applied to cancer survivorship. Our study supports the feasibility of engaging churches in a virtual training to support the development of cancer support ministries to address the needs of African-American cancer survivors. Based on our recruitment success, workshop attendance, evaluation and retention, our results suggest that a two-day workshop was successful in facilitating the initiation of cancer support ministries within African-American churches.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all of the participants for their time and effort put into this project. A special thanks to Dr. Karence L. Belton for her comments on a previous draft of this manuscript.

Funding

This project was funded by the Cancer Center through the Research and Education Program Fund, a component of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin (Grant # FP16968). The project described was supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, Award Number UL1 TR001436. The content is solely the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Community Health, Institute for Health and Equity, 8701 Watertown Plank Rd, Milwaukee, WI, 53226, USA

    Jamila L. Kwarteng

  2. Cancer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, USA

    Jamila L. Kwarteng, Debra Nevels, Sharon Brown & Melinda R. Stolley

  3. Breast Cancer Support Ministry, United4theCause, San Bernardino, USA

    Karen White

  4. Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, Milwaukee, USA

    Melinda R. Stolley

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  1. Jamila L. Kwarteng
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  2. Karen White
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  3. Debra Nevels
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  4. Sharon Brown
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  5. Melinda R. Stolley
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Contributions

Jamila Kwarteng and Melinda Stolley contributed to the study conception and design. Jamila Kwarteng, Sharon Brown and Melinda Stolley contributed to plan for study recruitment. Material preparation was performed by Karen White and Jamila Kwarteng, and data collection was performed by Sharon Brown and Jamila Kwarteng. Analysis was performed by Jamila Kwarteng. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Jamila Kwarteng, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jamila L. Kwarteng.

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Conflict of Interests

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Consent to Participate

Alteration of informed consent was approved by the IRB of the Medical College of Wisconsin. All participants received an informational letter describing each aspect of the study.

Consent to Publish

The authors affirm that human research participants were provided an informational letter for publication.

Ethics Approval

The study was approved to include Human Subjects by the Medical College of Wisconsin Institutional Review Board.

Research Involving Human and Animal Participants

This research involved Human Participants and was approved by the Medical College of Wisconsin Institutional Review Board. For this minimal risk study, an information letter was deemed appropriate to inform research participants about procedures of the study.

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Kwarteng, J.L., White, K., Nevels, D. et al. Equipping Faith-Based Communities for Cancer Support Ministry: A Pilot Study of Cancer Support Training for Members of African-American Churches in the USA. J Relig Health 63, 1523–1537 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-024-02013-8

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