The Role of Leadership Support in a Church-Based Cancer Education Implementation Study

Leadership plays a role in the success of an organization's initiatives. We examined church leaders' support-as perceived by lay community health advisor (CHA) interventionists-and implementation outcomes in a cancer early detection trial. CHAs perceived that their pastors: helped promote the intervention (M = 3.1/4, SD 1.2) and attended about half (M = 1.6/3, SD 1.3) the workshops. CHAs used marginally more techniques to recruit members when they perceived pastors were engaged in promoting the program (r (s) = .44, p = .08). Pastor attendance was positively associated with member enrollment (r (s) = .50, p < .05). Pastor support may be related to receptivity of both CHAs and congregants to engage in church health promotion.