Faith and culture in health care: Using collaborative relationships to address critical concerns -- A Roundtable Discussion

The presentation will discuss the Stairstep Foundation Health Initiative "There Is A Balm", a unique model that uses the community of faith to raise awareness, increase collaboration, and build capacity while empowering congregations and individuals to take charge of their health. The approach to engage churches began with recognizing that the African American Church has a historical and viable presence that could be used as a platform to dispense health messages. By engaging the pastor we provided funds to allow each congregation to hire a paid, part-time staff member (health coordinator) to serve as a health site coordinator in their congregation and in the surrounding community to ensure accountability. Each coordinator is responsible for assessing the health needs and health status of their congregation and for coordinating the church's health activities specific to its membership and surrounding community. In addition the coordinator attends monthly council meetings with other participating churches to receive health education and resources from health professionals, to network, and to offer one another support. The success of this model led to working with the pastor and coordinator to establish a Health Sunday in their congregation to present specific health topics during the morning worship. The pastor may validate this by including the topic in his/her sermon. The coordinator and church leaders pursue opportunities to include health in and bring health professionals to Bible study, auxiliary meetings, and other church events. In addition, some of the following health activities or events have been instituted: • Aerobics classes and walking groups • Health fairs and workshops • Yearly flu clinics at church sites • Policy changes in congregation to eat healthy by offering healthy choices of fruits and juice after morning worship • Educational opportunities & physical activities for children and teens to integrate faith and health to decrease teen pregnancy • Ongoing blood pressure checks and glucose and cholesterol screenings • CPR training for ushers, nurses, nursery staff and other leaders • Doula training to reduce infant mortality Our successes outweigh our challenges. However, funding is an ongoing challenge, as more churches would like to be a part of the initiative. The success of the project has opened other opportunities to ensure additional funds that have resulted in adding more churches, but there is still a waiting list. Another challenge was the absence of evaluative tools for this non-traditional approach, however, that was addressed with the help of graduate students from the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. The lessons learned are too numerous to mention in this abstract, however, we have proven that different denominations can work together. A portion of this model has also been replicated in Rochester, Minnesota.