Leveraging Trust to Advance Science, Engineering, and Medicine in the Black Community: Proceedings of a Workshop (2025)
Chapter: 8 The Power of the Black Church
8
The Power of the Black Church
Highlights from the Presentations
- Choose Healthy Life is a union between science and faith that launched with COVID-19. The program is one of the few in the country to give churches money to hire full-time health navigators in the community, who set up vaccination sites, testing, education, and other programs. Choose Healthy Life’s wellness program is now working with 60 churches (Fraser-Howze).
- With violence, health, and other issues competing for attention, it is hard to focus on environmental justice and climate change—until understanding the intersectionality of all these issues makes it clear why it is important to do so (Boseman).
- The message to Black scientists, engineers, and physicians is “come home. Know your people” (Boseman).
- The Abyssinian Baptist Church began in 1808 when Black New Yorkers did not want to worship in a segregated church. In providing food, clothing, and support for incarcerated people and others, it and other Black churches offered holistic services before the word “holistic” was trendy (Thompson).
- Church-based health navigators can serve as a ministry to leverage the knowledge of scientists, engineers, and doctors and spread it through the community, as well as sharing needed resources (Thompson).
- Green the Church works at the intersection of the Black faith community and environmental justice (Carroll).
- Black churches are not monolithic, and what will work in some congregations will not work in others. Patience is needed (Carroll).
Historically, the Black Church has been the rock of political and social activity and of supportive families in the Black community, said moderator Roger Mitchell, M.D. (Howard University; associate pastor, New Bethel Baptist Church). It also provides access to health care, education, housing, and other services. In this moment, it is significant for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to focus on the Black Church, he said, in introducing the participants in the session. A presentation by Debra Fraser-Howze (Choose Healthy Life) was followed by discussion with Rev. Brendolyn Boseman (Imani Group, Inc./Hudson Memorial CME Church), Linda Thompson (Abyssinian Baptist Church Health Ministry), and Rev. Ambrose Carroll, D.Min. (Green the Church).
CHOOSE HEALTHY LIFE
Choose Healthy Life, explained founder Ms. Fraser-Howze, is a union between science and faith. It builds on a model she helped develop to deal with HIV/AIDs in the 1980s. Ministers were members of that group’s advisory boards in several cities and helped raise resources locally that would support local organizations. It still operates as the National Black Leadership Commission on Health.1
The name “choose life” comes from Deuteronomy and focuses on the fact that a community has the power to choose life over death. Reminding the group about the health disparities discussed throughout the workshop, Ms. Fraser-Howze said that COVID-19 seemed similar to AIDS, in that Black people were dying in high numbers and rapidly. She saw clergy struggling to counsel family members and to bury all the people who had passed away. “It was happening so fast because we were sick in the first place; that is the underlying issue. We have to address wellness,” she said.
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1 See https://nblch.org.
COVID-19 as an Emergency
Choose Healthy Life is one of the few programs in the country to give churches money to hire full-time health navigators, which she said is “a proven, sustainable, and scalable model to address health disparities in the Black community.” The navigators set up vaccination sites, testing, education, and other programs. They go into the community outside the walls of the church. As an example of the need to address related issues such as the digital divide, Ms. Fraser-Howze recounted an experience with a senior citizen who had never used email before. “Every malady we have, we can see in the first pew of the church,” she commented. “Why aren’t we using the church as a vehicle?” She acknowledged that some people do not want to take this role. The navigators are a faith-based health workforce who collaborate with health centers, health organizations, and other organizations to show the union between faith and science on the ground, every day. Choose Healthy Life is also partnering with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health to measure and understand what is working and what is not.
Choose Healthy Life’s National Black Clergy Health Leadership Council is a very strong group. She particularly acknowledged the service of national co-chair Rev. Calvin Butts III, who recently passed away and who fought for the program until his dying day. The clergy group is expanding because it has proven to be so powerful to deliver services. A Medical Advisory Board also works with Choose Healthy Life and includes Roundtable member Louis Sullivan, M.D., and Reed Tuckson, M.D., F.A.C.P. (Black Coalition Against COVID-19; see Chapter 9).
Ms. Fraser-Howze related the tight timeline of getting organized before being able to access federal funds, which was accomplished while also launching services in five cities involving 50 churches. They hosted visits from First Lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and others. They received a $10 million grant from the Health Resources and Service Administration “at a time when the most hard-to-reach people had to be reached.” They expanded immediately to 120 churches in 13 states. In 9 months, they engaged with 23 million people in targeted communities, held 1,224 COVID-19 testing events, and 1,384 vaccination events.
Pivot to Wellness
Choose Healthy Life’s wellness program is now working with 60 churches, but the plan is to expand. Those involved in the COVID-19 effort are still getting training and services as well, she said. In July 2022, a National Black ClergyHealth Leadership Council and Medical Advisory Board summit was held in Washington, D.C.2 The group met with the secretary of health and human services, Xavier Becerra, who endorsed the Choose Healthy Life model and encouraged agency leaders to work with them, and also held a meeting on Capitol Hill with members of Congress. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is sponsoring a bill in Congress to provide a $100 million innovation fund for organizations who find new (and often unfunded) ways to promote health.
Through a partnership with the Choose Healthy Life Community Wellness Program, Quest Diagnostics is making its Blueprint for Wellness tool available to promote community wellness. After being screened for a variety of conditions, participants receive an easy-to-understand report and are also connected directly to providers who work with their church. New York City’s mayor and the state’s governor have supported and funded the project.
Ms. Fraser-Howze concluded that while short-term funding is secured, she hopes the $100 million Health Equity Innovation Fund will provide long-term support to churches and other community-based organizations, and she asked participants to advocate for it. She also welcomed medical professionals to partner with ministers “to sit with us at meetings and guide us on what we should be asking for.” Faith-based organizations need to have representation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, and other places where decisions were made. Recalling the words of Martin Luther King Jr. about “the fierce urgency of now,” she said, “if we don’t do this now after we saw what happened with COVID-19, it might not ever get done.”
DISCUSSION
Dr. Mitchell noted the previous panel on environmental justice ended with the need for science, engineering, and medicine (SEM) professionals
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2 See https://www.choosehealthylife.org/news/national-black-clergy-and-medical-leaders-from-choose-healthy-life-meet-with-hhs-sec-xavier-becerra-to-discuss-role-%E2%80%8B%E2%80%8Bof-the-black-church-in-addressing-health-equity.
to be in community and locking arms with the community (see Chapter 7). Choose Healthy Life is right on point with this idea, he said.
Trust within the Black Church
As Rev. Boseman stated, “the Black Church is alive and well.” She urged workshop participants in academia to partner with the churches in their community, which is a missed opportunity otherwise. “Not to engage and empower the church for this important work on these issues we are talking about—health, economic, education, criminal justice disparities—all the people sit in our pews and visit with us,” she said. She urged support to build capacity so that the church can make environmental justice relatable to the community, teach the democratic process as part of sacred duty, and influence public policy. One of the mantras of the People for the American Way African American Ministers Leadership Council, on which she serves, is “from the pulpit to the pews to the polls to public policy.” When the church is equipped and empowered in how to have these conversations, intersectionality results, she said.
“You can’t teach what you don’t know; you can’t lead where you don’t go,” Rev. Boseman said. One of the challenges is that the church is dealing with violence, health issues, and many other concerns. Addressing environmental justice and climate change becomes a stretch until the intersectionality with these issues is understood. “If we can teach that competently from the pulpit, during Bible study, during children’s sessions, then we can build into a more powerful entity.” She also noted that churches sometimes occupy unhealthy buildings. Yet, as a concrete example of the resource challenges in trying to make them greener, purchasing enough LED lightbulbs for the six chandeliers in her church would cost almost $1,000, “while I am trying to pay the light bill.”
Regarding engagement of Black SEM professionals with the Black community, Rev. Boseman had a simple message: “Come home. Know your people.” She urged participants to go to community members’ doorsteps and not remain within the walls of institutions. Reflecting on the comments by Ms. Fraser-Howze, she underscored the need to choose life. “There is a reckoning, and it sits with the power of our community and understanding the power of the Black Church,” she said.
The Key Role of the Health Navigator
Ms. Thompson, as a member of the Health Ministry at Abyssinian Baptist Church, serves as a health navigator. She said she is a firm believer in the concept of Sankofa, “reach back, look back, see what happened before, and bring it forward.” The church, she related, began in 1808 when a group of Black worshippers did not want to remain in a segregated Baptist church, and it has been a strong and respected institution for more than 214 years. “I am standing on those shoulders, on the foundation of the people who came before,” she said. “From the beginning, we’ve been at the forefront of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those who are incarcerated—looking out for the needs of people and operating in a holistic way before the term ‘holistic’ became trendy.”
Ms. Thompson paid tribute to former Cong. Adam Clayton Powell, Rev. Calvin Butts, and other leaders, and the lessons they imparted in building partnerships and serving people’s needs. She explained that Mrs. Patricia Butts started the Health Ministry to educate the congregation on such health concerns as diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer. Ms. Thompson stressed the role of the ministry to leverage the knowledge of scientists, engineers, and doctors and spread it through the community. “People can learn through us. We are the conduit,” she said, explaining that she takes the information she learns from partners in New York City hospitals, medical schools, and other institutions to go out to children, their parents, and others. Importantly, when the pandemic hit, she continued, “because we had the relationships, we were able to bring PPE [personal protective equipment] to the people.” She recalled receiving a phone call from a health official, and the Health Ministry was immediately on the streets giving out thousands of face masks, hand sanitizers, and gloves. Echoing a comment made by other participants during the workshop, she said, “That’s what I live for. We can connect the dots. Whatever the health issue is, we will find the way.” She noted that doctors are church members, too. People trust Abyssinian and other Black churches, because, she said, “they know we are looking out for their best interests.”
Priorities for Science, Engineering, and Medical Professionals
Dr. Carroll recounted he just attended a meeting of the Conference of National Black Churches, where trust was discussed in terms of coping with the pandemic and in other situations. Places of faith are the centers
of community and places of healing, he said, and he noted that all people are called by God to do work for healing and wholeness, no matter their position. He recalled growing up in Oakland, California, where the St. Luke Society brought together clergy and medical professionals.
Through Green the Church,3 “we are talking about issues of environmentalism and sustainability. These issues can be siloed if we let them. But the reality is in the Black Church, we do a lot more funerals based on hypertension, diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and cancer than funerals for gun violence. A lot of these deaths do not have to happen.” Areas with high levels of pollution and petrochemicals also take their toll; he related that his mother-in-law died of brain cancer at age 53 and his father died of a stroke at age 44. “It is imperative that any center that is trusted get the word out,” he stated. Reinforcing this point, at a health screening event held at church, he learned he had high cholesterol at age 30.
Ms. Fraser-Howze echoed the invitation issued to Black SEM professionals by Rev. Boseman:
Come home. It’s time for Black medical professionals—and bring white friends—to come home and make clear that the Black Church needs to be resourced so it can do what it needs to do. We know what works; we have seen it work. In all these papers that the academy writes, and policies they make, make sure the importance of faith and science together comes through.… We cannot play this game anymore … No one will save us but us. You, Black doctors, have the power to bring the resources we need to the community.
She urged medical professionals to work with ministers and with church and community organizations to provide guidance, help, and direction.
Rev. Boseman concurred that the voices from the church are powerful, but they need scientific information and knowledge to debunk myths. Quarterly, her church replaces Bible study with a session entitled Surviving to Thriving to discuss health issues, including conversation about mental health. She also noted the power of endorsements from the National Medical Association related to COVID-19 and other health issues. Studies abound on Black people, she said, “but bring it home and tell us what your findings are. Visit a Bible study session. That’s how we do intersectionality.”
Ms. Thompson urged SEM professionals to “relax and walk across the street. We’re waiting; we’ll meet you halfway, and we can do great things
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3 For more information, see https://www.greenthechurch.org.
together.” When an institution that had no footprint in the community wanted to be in the community, she counseled them,
Relax your egos, never mind your Ph.D.’s, but look at your heart. If you can come with a desire to serve others and a will to be retrained, it is not hard. The most important thing that we have are the relationships, the pastor with the people, and the people with each other. You don’t have to become a member of the church, but understand what we are doing, and we can help you.
Rev. Carroll commented that the Black Church is not monolithic. What makes sense in some congregations will not make sense in other congregations, and patience is required.
Closing Comments
Rev. Boseman said attention to climate change and environmental justice began with simple conversations among religious and lay leaders, including female faith leaders. “Science and spirit has never been a division among Black folks—we have always understood the miraculous, the scientific, the mystical and the spiritual,” she said. “I would love to see what happens with this conversation. I hope there is a next step to this.”
Ms. Fraser-Howze commented, “We’ve been Black first before we became doctors and pharmaceutical executives and ministers. The issue that I see clearly is to come home. You are trusted messengers, too. Standing side by side with clergy is a union that is powerful.”
Dr. Mitchell summed up, “Relationships, investment, and being side by side with the Black Church empowers the Black Church to be that trusted messenger to provide health information, not just for information’s sake but to save lives.”
On behalf of the workshop planning committee, Cedric Bright, M.D. (East Carolina University), thanked the presenters and told them he felt the presence of grace, and that “grace poured out of you and into us in the form of education.” He said the National Academies has experts, but “expertise to ourselves is an echo chamber. Only when you educate us and we tell you what we know will our communities be enriched.”
