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IHMC believes ͞Health is a Spiritual Matter. We use a holistic approach to educate, equip, support and empower churches and faith communities to promote health and healthier outcomes. Over the past eight years, IHMC has worked with 37 churches delivering 48 health promotion programs impacting over 5400 individuals. We have established an extensive partnership network, trusted relationships and credibility for results in the faith community and health sector. IHMC has successfully guided and mentored numerous faith congregations across the Rochester community in the development of functional and effective health ministries. These ministries have implemented programs to educate, equip and support people in their congregations to develop healthy lifestyle habits (e.g., regular physical exercise, techniques to reduce stress, adopt nutritious eating), and both prevent and manage diseases (diabetes, heart disease). IHMC’s role is to provide hands on support in assessing needs, selecting effective program models, and assisting churches to secure grant funding to support their programs. Health ministry programs have engaged people by making the linkage between faith and health and by offering health programs that are accessible, affordable and comfortable for participants: located on site at churches, at convenient times, for no cost and with supportive peer church members
Currently, twenty-four church members of IHMC have active health ministries. Member churches range from large (1500)) to small (25) in size, primarily serve communities of color and draw congregation members from across the socio-economic spectrum. We estimate 30% of congregants are people with low or poverty level income.
In addition to health ministry development, IHMC has undertaken a variety of faith-based health promotion projects. These include:
· Faith and Healthy Lifestyle Project: collaborating with Common Ground Health, implemented a program with 16 churches to decrease high blood pressure among their congregations. The program resulted in a steady increase in the percent of controlled HBN among participants (from 51% to 68% controlled) over 3 years.
· Five Health is A Spiritual Matter conferences/symposium, focused on the unique health needs of different populations (e.g., Men and Boys, families) or specific areas of health (e.g., trauma informed care, suicide warnings and prevention) and featuring national, regional and local health experts and faith leaders.
· Workshops and Training meetings to increase faith community knowledge and response to numerous health and mental health issues. These include leadership luncheons for pastors to recognize and address the health needs of their congregations, and topic specific sessions (e.g., opioid use and overdose prevention, healthy eating). Trainings often leverage the expertise of community health providers such as Trillium Health, FoodLink, the Black Physicians Network
· Toolkits: IHMC’s website links to ten toolkits specifically designed for use by faith congregations to provide accurate health and disease information to their members, help in accessing resources and using the strength of faith and the faith community to support healing. .
· Mental Health Programs: Renewing of the Mind (ROM), an 11-month mental health training and education course, framed for communities of color and faith and open to anyone. Many Members One Body (MMOB), a project study to see if understanding “systems thinking” facilitates how communities of color deal with mental illness and self-harm.
· We have also aided our community to respond to important health or civic issues such as outreach to increase census participation, distributing Covid safety supplies and information to 22 churches and helping register people of color for Covid Vaccines.
Supporting Racial Equity IHMC has long been aware of and worked to eliminate inequities in health care among People of Color. In our collaborations with community organizations, engaged with the faith communities we represent, we have always addressed the issue of race and ethnicity of the staff they are sending to our community. We have been very vocal about the need for information to be shared by people who look like us. We have also been asked by several of these organizations to look at their organizational structure and make recommendations, where we found racism to be an issue.
As a result, we have Brown and Black representatives on several community organization boards and advisory committees to help address the systemic changes needed.
Following the George Floyd and then Daniel Prude tragedies we publicly endorsed the Black Agenda statement of Racism as a Public Health Crisis. We engaged in the 21-day race challenge and shared the information widely within our network and our social media pages. We have had educational sessions, and continue to do so, on the effects of racism on mental, physical and spiritual health and ways we can help combat those negative effects. We have members of our executive team who have been part of the citywide, community efforts to make the structural changes needed to address racism in the handling of mental health issues in the Black and Brown community as well as in Law enforcement.
In seating our board of directors, we determined to have a diverse board, including those who do not look like us. Not only do we want other eyes and ears but we see this as an opportunity to educate those of other races and ethnicities who want come along side to support us in the fight against racism.