Congregations and Communities

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
Jeff Levin

Chapter 4 tells the story of how congregational health promotion and disease prevention programs evolved decades ago. Pioneered by the work of Granger Westberg in the 1970s and earlier efforts in community medicine in apartheid-era South Africa, later programs included collaborations with academic public health professionals, such as work in North Carolina churches focused on eliminating health disparities among African Americans. These programs, targeting underserved populations, have grown into a major feature of public health outreach in the United States, involving partnerships between faith-based and healthcare organizations. This chapter also outlines faith-based community programs involving healthcare and human services professionals that provide outreach to specialized populations. These include primary care clinics, faith community nursing, patient education, hospices, and other programs targeting older adults, mothers and children, the homeless and hungry, the unemployed, substance abusers and the physically and cognitively challenged, and others. Interfaith efforts are highlighted, as well as projects involving community organizing for social change.

2021 ◽  
pp. 003335492097269
Author(s):  
Michael A. Flynn ◽  
Alfonso Rodriguez Lainz ◽  
Juanita Lara ◽  
Cecilia Rosales ◽  
Federico Feldstein ◽  
...  

Collaborative partnerships are a useful approach to improve health conditions of disadvantaged populations. The Ventanillas de Salud (VDS) (“Health Windows”) and Mobile Health Units (MHUs) are a collaborative initiative of the Mexican government and US public health organizations that use mechanisms such as health fairs and mobile clinics to provide health information, screenings, preventive measures (eg, vaccines), and health services to Mexican people, other Hispanic people, and underserved populations (eg, American Indian/Alaska Native people, geographically isolated people, uninsured people) across the United States. From 2013 through 2019, the VDS served 10.5 million people (an average of 1.5 million people per year) at Mexican consulates in the United States, and MHUs served 115 461 people from 2016 through 2019. We describe 3 community outreach projects and their impact on improving the health of Hispanic people in the United States. The first project is an ongoing collaboration between VDS and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to address occupational health inequities among Hispanic people. The second project was a collaboration between VDS and CDC to provide Hispanic people with information about Zika virus infection and health education. The third project is a collaboration between MHUs and the University of Arizona to provide basic health services to Hispanic communities in Pima and Maricopa counties, Arizona. The VDS/MHU model uses a collaborative approach that should be further assessed to better understand its impact on both the US-born and non–US-born Hispanic population and the public at large in locations where it is implemented.


Author(s):  
Christine M. Thomas ◽  
Amy K. Liebman ◽  
Alma Galván ◽  
Jonathan D. Kirsch ◽  
William M. Stauffer

Migrant and immigrant farmworkers are cornerstones to food security and production in many nations. In the United States, farmworkers have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Because they are considered essential workers, vaccines may be made imminently available to them and offer an opportunity to reduce these COVID-19–related impacts. It is essential for a successful vaccination campaign to address the unique challenges arising from this workforce’s inherently mobile nature and limited access to healthcare. Proposed strategies to overcome these challenges include ensuring farmworkers are prioritized in vaccine allocation and provided cost-free vaccines at convenient locations through partnerships among health authorities, community- and faith-based groups, and health centers with trusted community relationships. Further, a portable immunization record should be used, and coordination of care continued when a farmworker moves to a new geographic location. If implemented well, vaccinating farmworkers can reduce the COVID-19 disease burden among these essential workers, improve public health, and protect food and agriculture production.


2015 ◽  
pp. 26-27
Author(s):  
Julie K. Wood

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.


2015 ◽  
pp. 305-310
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Engel

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.


2015 ◽  
pp. 195-206
Author(s):  
Sharon G. Moffatt ◽  
Monica Valdes Lupi ◽  
Kathleen Nolan

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.


2015 ◽  
pp. 167-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Barnett ◽  
Sara Rosenbaum

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.


2015 ◽  
pp. 105-110
Author(s):  
Lara Snyder

Drawing on the experiences of hundreds of public health and primary care clinicians from across the United States, this book explains why population health is receiving so much attention from policy makers in states and federal agencies, the practical steps that clinicians and public health professionals can take to work together to meet the needs of their community, signs that you are on the right track (or not) and how to sustain successes to the benefit of patients, community members, and the health care and public health teams that care for them.


2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (6) ◽  
pp. 850-854
Author(s):  
Eliyas K. Asfaw ◽  
Emily S. Guo ◽  
Sarah S. Jang ◽  
Swathi R. Komarivelli ◽  
Katherine A. Lewis ◽  
...  

We are the next generation of public health practitioners. As public health students, we acknowledge that the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic will continue to fundamentally alter the field that we are preparing to enter. We will be the first wave of public health professionals whose education is being shaped by this pandemic. For decades to come, we will be working to address the impacts of this pandemic. In this commentary, we are lending our voice to discuss and highlight the importance of considering the intersections of various determinants of health and COVID-19, including education, food insecurity, housing instability, and economic hardship. We provide a discussion on what is being done across the United States in attempts to reduce the growing health inequities. As the next generation of public health leaders, we believe that only by investing in these issues can we begin to address the social and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (Supplement_4) ◽  
Author(s):  
B Rechel

Abstract Background There are almost universal calls for improved collaboration between public health and primary care, but it is less clear how this can be achieved in practice. This presentation summarises key findings from an Observatory policy brief on how to enhance collaboration. Methods The policy brief iss based on a systematic review of the academic literature on collaboration between public health and primary care, searching the databases Medline and Embase for articles published since 2010. After title, abstract and full-text screening, 46 articles were retained and included in the review. Results Most academic articles on collaboration between primary care and public health are concerned with the United States and Canada. From the European countries, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are most strongly represented. There is also a very uneven timeline in publication, with a spike in articles published in 2012, following an influential Institute of Medicine report. Research has identified organizational models of primary care that are conducive to collaboration with public health, as well as systemic, organizational and interpersonal factors that can facilitate or hinder collaboration. However, the relative importance of these factors remains poorly understood. Improved collaboration between public health and primary care promises to bring major benefits, but these are rarely documented in the literature so far. Furthermore, collaboration may also bring certain risks, such as competition over scarce resources. Conclusions The literature on collaboration between public health and primary care points to many illustrative examples, but also identifies relevant principles and factors that can hinder or facilitate collaboration. Policy interventions to improve collaboration will need to be mindful of potential risks and should aim to demonstrate benefits, which will help to increase buy-in from primary care and public health professionals and the public. Panelists: Ilana Ventura Federal Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection, Austrian Government, Vienna, Austria Contact: [email protected] Birger Forsberg International Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden Contact: [email protected] Rémi Pécault-Charby Caisse Nationale de l’Assurance Maladie, Paris, France Contact: [email protected]


2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melinda Cooper

This article addresses the rise of faith-based emergency relief by examining the US President’s Emergency Plan for HIV/AIDS (PEPFAR), a public health intervention focused on the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that the theological turn in humanitarian aid serves to amplify ongoing dynamics in the domestic politics of sub-Saharan African states, where social services have assumed the form of chronic emergency relief and religious organizations have come to play an increasingly prominent role in the provision of such services. In the context of an ongoing public health crisis, PEPFAR has institutionalized the social authority of the Pentecostal and charismatic churches, leading to a semantic confluence between the postcolonial politics of emergency and the Pentecostal/Pauline theology of kairos or event. Far from being confined to the space of foreign aid, however, the faith-based turn in humanitarianism is in keeping with ongoing reforms in domestic social policy in the United States. While on the one hand the sustained welfare programmes of the New Deal and Great Society have been dismantled in favour of a system of emergency relief, on the other hand the federal government has intensified its moral, pedagogical and punitive interventions into the lives of the poor. The wilful transfer of welfare services to overtly religious service providers has played a decisive role in this process. The article concludes with a critical appraisal of the links between African and North American Pentecostal-evangelical churches and questions the revolutionary mission ascribed to Pauline political theology in recent political theory.


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