TY - JOUR
T1 - Social Network Structures in African American Churches
T2 - Implications for Health Promotion Programs
AU - Nam, Soohyun
AU - Jung, Sunyoung
AU - Whittemore, Robin
AU - Latkin, Carl
AU - Kershaw, Trace
AU - Redeker, Nancy S.
AU - Jeon, Sangchoon
AU - Vlahov, David
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Nursing Research and National Research Foundation of Korea (K23NR014661 and NRF-2017R1D1A1B03033380).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, The New York Academy of Medicine.
PY - 2019/4/15
Y1 - 2019/4/15
N2 - The prevalence of obesity among African Americans is higher than among other racial/ethnic groups. African American churches hold a central role in promoting health in the community; yet, church-based interventions have had limited impact on obesity. While recent studies have described the influence of social networks on health behaviors, obesity interventions informed by social network analysis have been limited. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 281 African American men and women from three churches in northeast urban cities in the USA. Data were collected on sociodemographic and clinical factors and anthropometrics. Using a social network survey applying a name generator, we computed network level metrics. Exponential random graph models (ERGM) were performed to examine whether each structural property found in the empirical (observed) networks occurred more frequently than expected by chance by comparing the empirical networks to the randomly simulated networks. Overall, church friendship networks were sparse (low density). We also found that while friendship ties were more reciprocated between dyads in church networks, and there were more tendencies for clustering of friendships (significant positive transitive closure) than in random networks, other characteristics such as expansiveness (number of actors with a great number of friends) did not differ from what would be expected by chance in random networks. These data suggest that interventions with African American churches should not assume a unitary network through which a single intervention should be used.
AB - The prevalence of obesity among African Americans is higher than among other racial/ethnic groups. African American churches hold a central role in promoting health in the community; yet, church-based interventions have had limited impact on obesity. While recent studies have described the influence of social networks on health behaviors, obesity interventions informed by social network analysis have been limited. We conducted a cross-sectional study with 281 African American men and women from three churches in northeast urban cities in the USA. Data were collected on sociodemographic and clinical factors and anthropometrics. Using a social network survey applying a name generator, we computed network level metrics. Exponential random graph models (ERGM) were performed to examine whether each structural property found in the empirical (observed) networks occurred more frequently than expected by chance by comparing the empirical networks to the randomly simulated networks. Overall, church friendship networks were sparse (low density). We also found that while friendship ties were more reciprocated between dyads in church networks, and there were more tendencies for clustering of friendships (significant positive transitive closure) than in random networks, other characteristics such as expansiveness (number of actors with a great number of friends) did not differ from what would be expected by chance in random networks. These data suggest that interventions with African American churches should not assume a unitary network through which a single intervention should be used.
KW - African American
KW - Church-based intervention
KW - Community-based health intervention
KW - Obesity
KW - Social network analysis
KW - Social network structure
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85061496060&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85061496060&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s11524-018-00339-9
DO - 10.1007/s11524-018-00339-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 30747370
AN - SCOPUS:85061496060
SN - 1099-3460
VL - 96
SP - 300
EP - 310
JO - Journal of Urban Health
JF - Journal of Urban Health
IS - 2
ER -