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During the discussion period, Robert McLellan of Dartmouth-Hitchcock referred to immunization as an example of how personal autonomy gets pitted against public health and asked a how faith–health collaboration could address this conundrum. Gene Matthews of the University of North Carolina and former chief counsel to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reframed the question about personal liberty in recognition of the fact that freedom from vaccine-related illness is also an important aim. Ella Auchincloss of ReThink Health asked how the engagements with faith-based organizations should be conducted so they are not simply viewed as assets or venues, but as true partners. Gunderson answered that it takes artfulness to create a collaborative space that is a limited domain (i.e., neither side has it as its sovereign space) that permits each side to come in with its own integrity, ethics, and motivation, and to work together in a way that achieves the goals of all partners. Mylynn Tufte of the North Dakota Department of Health asked about leading practices or evidence related to how faith-based entities support behavioral and mental health to decrease stigma associated with addiction. Missy Stancil of CareNet Counseling responded that her organization “specializes in spiritually integrated psychotherapy and community-based work.” She has found that in working both with community partners (e.g., congregations) and health care organizations, there is internalized stigma that requires a process of mutual education. Amy Moyer of Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic commented on her organization’s deep interest in understanding how private, nonprofit, and government relationships can form around faith-based mental health initiatives. The faith community needs to be included in decision-making circles to help hospital boards and public entities, according to Eva Powell of Common Purpose Health. Angeloe Burch of the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of Durham commented on the importance of having a thorough understanding of an organization, faith tradition, or individual with which one seeks to collaborate or whom one seeks to serve. To illustrate, he highlighted three aspects of community and personal history that may be relevant to faith–health partnerships: the Primitive Baptist denomination’s opposition to doing missionary work abroad, African Americans’ concerns about immunization rooted in their communities’ negative past interactions with public health, and the effects of a patient’s interaction with health care providers who act as though they believe they know the patient better than the patient knows himself or herself.

Gunderson invited Cochrane to comment on the concept of tangible and intangible networks at the faith–health interface and on the concept of health worlds. As described in the slide Gunderson shared from the work of ARHAP, it is not enough to enumerate and describe hospital personnel, equipment, and the like, but intangible factors and assets such as trust and power also need to be considered and described. The lifeworld, Cochrane stated, “is the taken-for-granted assumptions that affect the way people make decisions and behave in the world that go far beyond simply the rational and the limited sense of calculating instrumental decisions that one makes between benefit and cost.” Cochrane and colleagues created the phrase “healthworld” to describe “the way in which people construct their own sense of health and what they do with that.” In addition to people’s understanding of themselves, Cochrane added, they are “embedded in families with traditions, cultures with traditions, and religions with traditions,” and all of those dimensions have effects on the “practice of the science of health.”

The first panel was moderated by Kathy Gerwig of Kaiser Permanente and featured Kirsten Peachey of Congregational Health Partnerships for Advocate Health Care and the Center for Faith and Community Health Transformation. Peachey told the audience that the virtual center represents the joint work of the staff of Advocate Health Care, a faith-based system affiliated with the Lutheran Church. Peachey’s role is director of Congregational Health Partnerships across the wide range of religious traditions represented in the communities around Chicago. The center emerged as part of conversations in the development of the quinquennial Illinois Department of Public Health community health improvement plan. It represents a partnership with the Neighborhoods Initiative at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Chicago Department of Public Health. Peachey mentioned Gunderson’s previous work at the Interfaith Health Program at Emory University. This influenced efforts in Chicago, including with CDC funding (e.g., the Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health [REACH] program), focused on the central question: “How do we work together more effectively at the root causes of health disparities in ways that will create transformation in our communities and in ways that will really bring the strength of public health and the strength of faith together?” Peachey described the breadth of activities conducted by the center and the leadership approaches it employs, including visioning to advance health equity and justice (see Box 1), which deploys the concept of the moral imagination. As an example, she asked, “When we are facing an issue such as food insecurity in our communities, what is the moral imagination that we bring as people of faith to this issue? How does that inform what we want to try to do and what we want to try to accomplish?” Research activities include surveying and enumerating member activities and programs that address trauma and seek to build resiliency.

During a brief question-and-answer period, Magnan asked Peachey to say more about the Risking Connection in Faith Communities² curriculum being used by the center and its partners. Peachey noted that the curriculum is a helpful resource for multifaith, trauma-informed congregations.

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² See https://thecrg.org/resources/risking-connection-in-faith-communities-a-training-curriculum-for-faith-leaders-supporting-trauma-survivors (accessed May 8, 2018).

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