Salus Forum December 3, 2025

Jack

The short answer is no, there’s not much. There are a few people. A post from the American Public Health Association journal concerns faith-based organizations and public health, another facet of the public health dialogue. There has been a little bit, particularly among vulnerable communities, Black churches, and Mexican immigrant churches, where they have nailed this much better. So, the Center for African American Health in Denver grew out of an organization called the Black Church Initiative, and where they supported and trained parish nurses. And I worked with them for a decade to train them in diabetes, hypertension and cancer prevention.

So, the church had a parish nurse who was there on Sundays and Wednesdays, and members could talk with. We actually enrolled them in a hypertension home blood pressure monitoring program, where patients in the Black churches could give their blood pressures to their parish nurse, and she could then help them follow up with either the pharmacist or their primary care clinician. So, there are some examples of this, but they’re very sporadic, and they’re mentioned more in the religious media than they are in peer-reviewed medical journals.

Now, with a few exceptions, end-of-life care, countless articles on the clergy’s role in end-of-life care, lots of stuff there, chaplains, pastors, faith communities, that kind of stuff, but not related to all these other aspects that we fleshed out. You know, end-of-life is a big deal, yeah, but also the beginning of life is a big deal, and I don’t know, middle age is a big deal. I think most of the people on this call have successfully navigated middle age and are now on to the older-ish category.

So, the rest of those have not been studied, Walt, and I think part of my wish was that this could come out and people might take pieces of this, whether that’s advocacy and agency, or how to prepare a church for an emergency. Right now, it’s hit and miss. No one knows what to really do, and so, in case the shooter shows up, hiding is not the answer.

That ends up in a lot of dead people. So, what do you do? I’ve resuscitated three people in our church, one with chest compressions, the other two one was a stroke, and one was just, I don’t know what she had, but we didn’t have an AED at the time, and I was like, well, I can’t do this without an AED, even though the firefighters can show up. I was sitting in the pew, and the lady behind me tapped me on the shoulder, and I looked around, and she pointed at the choir loft, just as this elderly woman turned green and keeled over.

And so, we went up and resuscitated her, but there isn’t a lot of science right now behind it. People are hit and miss.

Bill B

Jack, one of the things I’m wondering, I mentioned about the mental health issues, that part of it was that people could not afford to go to a psychologist or any mental health With what’s going on now in the cost of medical services and the potential loss of insurance, are we going to find at least certain auxiliary activities being done free of charge at the churches? The church is becoming a preliminary place where people get certain healthcare services at no cost before they go to see an expensive physician. Are we going to find some of that occurring? Because obviously, we’re about to have a major crisis in terms of the affordability of healthcare.