The overall goal was to achieve a significant increase in the proportion of African Americans consuming a low fat, low salt "prudent" diet and to increase the proportion with optimal levels of blood pressure and total blood cholesterol. The specific aims were to: 1) assess the eating patterns and attendant nutrition literacy issues in urban African Americans, 2) determine the effectiveness of a lay volunteer-mediated multimodal culturally-specific church-based intervention compared with a strategy using solely written and visual self-help materials, 3) determine the impact of an intensive culturally-specific nutrition education intervention on the selection of "prudent" low fat, low salt alternatives when compared with the usual approaches to influencing food selection in major markets and fast-food restaurants, and 4) develop a process module which allowed generalization of this community-based technique to other low literacy high cultural-specificity groups.