Clergy, Center Join to ‘Kick Butts’
Nashville, Tenn., sits snugly in the center
of the Bible Belt, that swathe of Southern states where religion is intricately woven through the fabric of daily life. So when Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers and local African-American civic leaders started talking about health problems linked to tobacco, they naturally turned to a local pastor for guidance.
The Rev. Raymond Bowman, pastor of Spruce Street Missionary Baptist Church, had his own reason for agreeing to lead an anti-tobacco education campaign. His own father was diagnosed with cancer nearly 30 years ago.
“We believe it is because he started smoking when he was 7 or 8 years old, down in Mississippi,” Bowman explained. “The cancer keeps on recurring and it has caused him so much pain over the years. My goal in working with Vanderbilt-Ingram and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to prevent other people from having to live through the horror of watching a loved one suffer because they made some bad choices early in life.”
As part of the NAACP Tobacco Prevention Initiative, Bowman called on other pastors in the African-American community to take concrete action against tobacco use among members of their congregations. They called their project the Kick Butts program.
In November 2006, in conjunction with the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smokeout, 15 pastors in the Kick Butts program gathered to sign a proclamation designating their churches as smoke-free facilities. Nashville’s Metro Public Health Department agreed to provide anti-smoking signs for every church that participated.
Elizabeth A. Williams, Ph.D., associate director of Minority Affairs for Vanderbilt-Ingram, was one of the researchers who helped formulate the strategy for the community campaign.
“We were able to bring scientific knowledge to bear on the discussion about tobacco use,” said Williams. “In addition to the smoking proclamation that first year, there also was an anti-tobacco sermonette offered by one of our clergy partners about the impact of tobacco on communities of color. We developed this educational program to coincide with an existing training congress made up of nearly 40 Baptist congregations in the Nashville area. So we took an existing event and infused it with an anti-tobacco message.”
The clergy leaders decided they wanted to do far more than make a statement with just one event. They wanted to create beneficial and long-lasting changes in their community.
“It felt like we asked for tap water and they gave us Perrier instead,” said Tonya Micah, manager of the Office of Minority Affairs at Vanderbilt-Ingram.
As a result of the partnership among the NAACP, Vanderbilt-Ingram, Meharry Medical College, Metro Government and Tennessee State University, the Kick Butts program has expanded to include educational workshops for adults and children. The organization’s leaders also are studying advertising patterns in their neighborhoods and are planning to communicate with tobacco companies and advertising agencies about the seemingly high rate of tobacco advertising in the area.
As part of her academic research, Williams will be measuring the impact of this unique community-driven education program.
“As a group, we developed needs assessment surveys for adults and youth to get
prevalence data about their tobacco use as
well as their exposure to tobacco advertising,” Williams explained. “We plan to implement a pilot project in many of our churches that includes a tobacco prevention program for youth. All of these prevention models will be evidence-based so they will include pre- and post-test instruments to determine the level and extent of behavioral change.”
Bowman is determined to spread the word about the health threat from tobacco and to spare others the pain his family has endured.
“If you want people to be healthy and strong then you have to be advocates to make sure they live productive lives,” he said.
– by Dagny Stuart
