Salus Forum December 3, 2025

I started writing a book during my first or second year of med school. Then, life got in the way. We had residency and kids and stuff. But I continued to work on this. And all my sisters as clergy frequently called. During the pandemic, they called about when they should close their church, when they should reopen their church, what they should do with masking. One of them wanted to open a clinic in their church basement.

There were a number of shootings at churches. My personal friend in Kansas, an abortion doctor, was shot in his church. Several other church shootings occurred. And so, I helped my sisters establish an emergency response. And then, automatic external defibrillators became a thing. I helped them get those into their churches so that they could support emergencies. We continued to think about what the role of the clergy is in healthcare.

So, I took on this little study. It’s really not a qualitative research project. It’s really not a quantitative research study. It will probably never get published in a medical journal. And that’s okay. It is a narrative description of a bunch of conversations that I’ve had. It sounds like a Salus conversation with a group of clergy discussing their involvement in healthcare, whether that’s through direct care in their clinic or church, or whether it’s advocacy for a particular population in their community. And so, we did a literature review and a mixed-method conversation in the community. This is a poster I presented at the North American Primary Care Research Group.

I have about 50,000 words prepared in the book I am writing.  I’m hoping that’s all I need. I think I sent a chapter of it along, the first chapter of Why This Book, that outlines some of the other chapters. I will read the middle section: “clergy serve a variety of roles, from advocating for patients, supporting patient and family autonomy, preparing a faith community for medical emergencies, and public health activities. So, clergy are right now involved in healthcare across this full spectrum of individual support to full public health and community support.”

A famous population health person with the last name of Galen, talked about churches during the pandemic as being a crucial element of pandemic response with immunizations and care. They are doing advocacy work, but also giving vaccines.