Chicago Tribune - July 1, 2008
Deborah L. Shelton, dshelton@tribune.com

How about inviting small groups of neighborhood residents to meetings in intimate settings similar to the homey way families swap stories around a kitchen table?

From that simple concept, Kitchen Table Interventions was born. Launched in January as a pilot project by Northwestern University in partnership with Westside Health Authority, Kitchen Table Interventions was designed to study urban health problems and help residents of the underserved West Side community live healthier lives.

Taking a novel approach, project staff trained everyday people to conduct research and teach other residents healthy behaviors.

The project focused on Austin because its residents suffer from high rates of asthma, heart disease, hypertension and other health problems that disproportionately strike impoverished city neighborhoods.

From residents to researchers

Eight neighborhood residents-all women, as it ended up-were trained to become researchers and health advocates for the project.

As researchers, the women surveyed 300 randomly selected households to get a better sense of residents' medical problems and health behaviors.

As health advocates, they led weekly sessions that focused on nutrition, exercise, emotional wellness, HIV/AIDS, breast cancer and other topics identified by survey respondents as being of critical importance. Facilitators invited friends, neighbors or anyone else they thought could benefit-but no more than six, to keep the sessions intimate.

Experts, often doctors and other health professionals from Northwestern, were invited as guest speakers. But just as often, the participants taught themselves-swapping recipes, sharing experiences about stressful life events and talking about the lifestyle changes they had made to cope. For example, they learned about the importance of portion control, physical activity, healthy cooking and emotional well-being.

A 60-year-old woman in one of the groups learned how to perform a breast self-examination for the first time, said Adell Young, the group's facilitator.

"We can live longer if we pay more attention to how we treat our bodies," said Young, 65, a retired hospital clerk who has lived in Austin for more than 30 years. "All of this high blood pressure, diabetes and all these other things we go through, people need to know that maybe they can avoid all of that if they eat better and do a little more exercise."

Young, who suffers from high blood pressure and arthritis, practiced what she preached. After a cooking demonstration during one session, she made drastic changes.

"I don't use as much salt as I once did. I use Mrs. Dash," she said. "I use oregano. I use low-fat chicken broth. I really cut down on our fat intake."

Young was so enthusiastic about what she learned that she plans to bring the interventions to her church starting next month.

Kitchen Table Interventions grew out of the Community Healthy Lifestyles Partnership Project, which was funded with $380,000 from the National Institutes of Health's National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

The informational sessions ended this spring and now researchers are analyzing data from the research. It will be used in designing health intervention programs in urban neighborhoods.

Myths shattered

Dr. Kevin Weiss, professor of clinical medicine at Northwestern and co-investigator of the project, said Kitchen Table Interventions shatters a lot of myths.

"I learned how much interest [neighborhood residents] had in trying to improve their health," he said. "All you have to do is open your ears. If you listen, you will get ideas about how to make behavior change."

With this type of study, called community-based participatory research, the community gets an equal voice in what the research looks like, Weiss said. "My task was to work with the community and fashion [the intervention] in a way that a scientist could study," he said. Sharon Jaddua, a 24-year resident of Austin who was a community researcher and health advocate, feels good about her role in the project. The session she led on reading food labels stands out most in her mind. She recalls how eager participants were to learn how to read labels correctly.

"I felt like I was helping someone," she said, "and that was what we were out there to do: to bring good information about healing and health to people in my community."

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