Health programming priorities among faith communities in Jefferson County, Alabama

ABSTRACT

This paper details findings from interviews with 32 faith leaders regarding their interest in and preferences for collaborative health partnerships with an academic center. Participants were willing to partner to develop equitable, sustainable, and trust-based relationships for the purpose of meeting the health needs of their congregations. We also describe the planning and early development of faith community-academic partnership focused on providing information and resources aimed at improving health. We apply a framework incorporating a socioecological perspective and social capital theory to discuss how establishing linkages between clergy and academic researchers is a beneficial and important task for social work.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic-faith partnerships
• health ministry
• clergy/faith leaders
• health and illness
• congregations

Acknowledgments

This study received direct support from the Congregational Studies Team through the Hartford Institute for Religion Research and Lilly Endowment, Inc., and preliminary work for this study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH; 1R21HD050137-01A2), both grants awarded to the second author. The research was also supported by a National Research Service Award institutional training grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ; 5T32HS013852) awarded to the first author. We would like to thank the clergy and congregations involved in the study and partnership. We also thank the Congregational Studies Team for guidance on congregational scholarship.

Disclosure statement

The authors received funding from the NIH, AHRQ, and the Hartford Institute for Religion Research/Lilly Endowment, Inc.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality [5T32HS013852]; National Institutes of Health [1R21HD050137-01A2]; Lilly Endowment, Inc.