The Healthy Black Family Project (HBFP) concentrates on several East End neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. This area, called the Health Empowerment Zone, has a high proportion of Black residents and of people living below the federal poverty line. HBFP works with individuals and families, providing a diversity of activities and services to help prevent diabetes and hypertension. HBFP provides health coaches, lay health advocates, and nutritionists at no cost to help families alter their activity and diet to create and maintain a healthy lifestyle. They offer cooking classes, exercise classes, walking clubs, a smoking cessation program, as well as yoga, tai chi, and meditation classes, all designed to promote a healthy lifestyle and prevent disease. In addition, HBFP provides genetic therapy to ascertain family health history and any risks that might be linked with it, as well as giving a health risk assessment to create a personal health analysis, and they help individuals learn realistic ways to handle chronic disease.

Healthy Black Families Project also implements the “Small Steps, Big Rewards” campaign, enthused by the findings of a NIH sponsored study, HHS’ Diabetes Prevention Program (DDP) clinical trial. This study has shown that individuals with pre-diabetes, can delay and probably even prevent type 2 diabetes simply by making reasonable changes in diet and exercise that enable them to lose five to seven percent of their body weight. Regular physical action such as a brisk thirty minute walk five times per week, and modest weight loss could cut the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by more than half in pre-diabetic individuals. These lifestyle changes were shown to be particularly successful in individuals over age 65. HBFP has every confidence that these methods will prove effective in Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods. The Healthy Black Family Project provides the framework for all of these programs, and tracks the progress of the families and individuals who are involved. Approximately 6000 individuals have registered in the program. "The overall goal of the Healthy Black Family Project,” said Dr. Angela Ford, associate director of the center, “is to close the gap in health status between blacks and whites through coordinated community mobilization that is culturally relevant and grounded in a public health approach."