Towards A Healthy and Active Public Housing Community: Attitudes towards Healthy Lifestyles and Perceived Obstacles Among the Residents

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis: Guided by the attitudinal construct of the theory of planned behavior, this study aimed to understand issues affecting low-income African-American residents living in public housing facilities from engaging in healthy lifestyles. Specifically, the present study examined how children living in public housing define health (RQ1), what they do to stay healthy (RQ2), what would make them engage more actively in healthy lifestyles (RQ3), and the types of communication channels they preferred to receive health information. This study also examined how parents of these children living in public housing define health (RQ5), what they perceive as obstacles to healthy lifestyles (RQ6), and credible sources and channels for information (RQ7).

Methods: Seven focus groups were conducted to examine the proposed research questions. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling from a list of public housing residents in a mid-Missouri city. A total of 30 children between the ages of 4-15 participated in the focus groups, along with 10 adults. Thirty-seven of the 40 respondents were African-Americans, and three were Caucasian. Twenty-eight participants were female and 12 were male. Participants were offered gift cards as incentives. All seven focus groups were held in computer labs at a local community center from March 2, 2010 through March 9, 2010. Each focus group lasted approximately 60 minutes for adults and 30 minutes for children.

Results: The findings from the children’s focus group revealed that children think being healthy mainly has to do with diet, lifestyle habits, quality of life, and physical appearance (RQ1). Additionally, while they try to exercise and eat well to stay healthy, adhering to such behaviors are challenging due to environmental constraints and access to healthy food (RQ2). The children expressed that having friends to play with would encourage them to participate more in physical activity (RQ3), and they would prefer to hear health related information from their parents because they are affectionate and sincere (RQ4).    The findings from the parent’s focus group revealed some different patterns. The adults expressed that being healthy is a liberated state-of-mind, emphasizing that “the mind needs to be free” to achieve true health (RQ5). Interestingly, the parents believed that they were being monitored by the city and were given restricted access to local facilities to better their mental and physical health (RQ6). Finally, the adult participants expressed that interpersonal communication or word-of-mouth strategies from friends, family members, and community leaders (i.e., religious figures) would be the best way to convey health information (RQ7).

Conclusions: Contributing to previous studies examining health disparities among African-American communities, this study provides additional insight to how members of a low-income community define healthy lifestyle and what they identify as obstacles for achieving optimal health.

Implications for research and/or practice: This study provides public health administrators with information about what residents in public housing communities think are the main threats and obstacles for engaging in healthy life. Findings pertaining to preferred communication sources and channels would allow practitioners to identify and utilize effective spokesperson through effective communication channel to disseminate necessary health-related information.