Keeping a community mentally and physically healthy can’t just be a matter of faith.

If faith were the only driving force, then faith-based health centers and congregations could forge a relationship that would address all a community’s health concerns. But more often than not faith-based health centers and congregations aren’t working together, according to a groundbreaking study from the University of Chicago.

What may be needed to strengthen that bond are effective models, like the partnerships forged in Chicago, which would prove the seemingly obvious: that two faith-based organizations can work together.

The main difference between secular and faith-based health centers is motivation, said Dr. Farr Curlin, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago Hospitals. In faith-based centers, like the ones Curlin surveyed, “a sense of religious vocation contributes to physicians’ and other providers’ willingness to work in that community.”

Faith-based collaboration

Curlin said inner city community development drove him to investigate how health-care centers work together with local congregations. “As a Christian, I was particularly interested in the role that community health-care centers could and should play,” said Curlin, also a professor at the university’s MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.

 “If anybody is collaborating with religious congregations, it would be the faith-based health care centers,” he said, referring to a common misperception. But, based on the anecdotal evidence, “my hunch was that we would not see a whole lot of interaction,” Curlin said.

Curlin and his team studied five faith-based community health centers in four major cities: Chicago, Dallas, Indianapolis and Los Angeles. They then interviewed the faith leaders from 23 different congregations in the city surrounding the health centers.

Interviews with health-care centers leaders showed they perceived the local congregations as effectively neutral. “They didn’t have negative feelings for sure,” said Curlin. “But in most of the cases didn’t have a lot of interaction with them one way or another.”

Local congregations similarly showed disinterest in a formal partnership with health-care centers. Some congregations had temporarily partnered with other health-care systems to do one-stop immunization clinics and other targeted interventions, said Curlin. For the congregation leaders, “they wanted things to happen at their church,” he said. “The leaders of these congregations see community health-care centers as a place to send people for health care and as a potential source of resources that can be brought to the religious congregations in outreach,” Curlin said.

Working out the kinks

When Dr. Neftali Serrano came to work with Chicago’s Lawndale Christian Health Center, he thought local churches would be eager to partner with a health center that had a holistic focus.

“For us, it was a logical tie in with in living out our mission to provide quality, affordable, holistic health care, particularly in the care of the soul of the patient,” said Serrano of the Outreach Community Counseling Center affiliated with Lawndale, a health-care center that has won federal faith-based grants in the past.

“What I encountered was quite a bit of resistance. They had their own things going on,” he said. “We have to learn what the churches needs are, once we start from there we need to keep building what the resources that the church already has,” said Serrano, also a primary-care psychologist.

Contributing to the community

Even churches that lack resources can contribute to a community in ways that aren’t always readily apparent, said Serrano. “Lots of churches have an inward mentality,” he said. “They’re trying to meet the needs of their own congregation and thus don’t have much of a sense of what actual community needs are and how they can meet those needs.”

For instance, a church — not a clinic — may be the right place for people needing general counseling, he said.

“There’re tons of people that could serve as great lay counselors,” Serrano said of local congregation members. His goal in reaching out to the congregations is to “develop and train lay counselors to help with mental health needs of our patients in a very naturalistic way,” he said.

But the desire to help with mental health needs also has to also match ability of both parties involved.

Serrano first took the tack of inviting lay counselors to volunteer at the clinic. But the low volunteer turnout and the difference in scale from church to clinic made Serrano realize that this approach wouldn’t work.

The solution: “Instead of expecting the church to come to us, we have to go to the churches,” he said. Not only approach the churches, said Serrano, but also “we were going to have to add some value instead of giving them another project to add to their list.”

Often churches can provide something that clinics can’t, as in the case of Serrano’s project working with a local church called Brotherly Love Baptist located in the Westside of Chicago.

Jennifer Gorham, a Lawndale psychiatry doctoral candidate, represents the clinic in its collaboration with Brotherly Love and its pastor David Pope. The goal of the partnership is to train congregation members in basic counseling skills so that they can take on the clinic’s overflow.

Pope met with Serrano to discuss a possible collaboration a year ago. “His concern was the fact that for their increasing clientele, they could not meet the needs of some of their clients, particularly the need of a spiritual component,” Pope said.

“We have so many patients that come through our clinic and a lot of them are in need of more services than our pastoral care services can provide,” said Gorham. Brotherly Love, located only two blocks away from the mental health center, may be a better option, she said.

“Our goal is to have really healthy congregations in the area, mental health services that we would feel really comfortable in sending people to them,” said Gorham, emphasizing that Pope’s congregants may be better able to better address needs of the spirit.

Serving mental health dovetails nicely with the religious outlook of both the clinic and the church. The partnership, said Gorham, “is nothing short of fulfilling our mission because it’s serving Christ.”

Although Jesus may be their spiritual bond, both Lawndale and Brotherly Love have committed time and energy to make their partnership work.

“It’s evolving and it’ll be ever evolving,” said Pope. “My job is to make sure that there is continuity for the community.”

As in any collaboration, the real key may be the ability to communicate that keeps partnerships strong. “It’s about open and honest communication,” Pope said. “As long as that communication is open and honest, we’ll keep up that connection.”

 

 

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