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October 20, 2007 - Clarion Herald
Health Center for working poor moves forward
By Christine Bordelon
“I truly believe that it has been the church that has stood up and made the difference (in New Orleans’ revival) in the last two years,” Dr. Scott Morris, founder and executive director of the Church Health Center in Memphis, told faith and business leaders gathered Oct. 10 to discuss a proposed church-backed healthcare center for the working uninsured in New Orleans.
“The model of the church health center is calling people of faith together to say, ‘This is what we are supposed to do according to God,’” Morris, who has a master’s in divinity as well as a medical degree, said. “We have to try to find a way for you to live out the gospel of health care for the poor.”
When he hatched the Memphis center 20 years ago, Morris said he was doing it in the poorest city in the nation. He corralled multiple faiths, the health community and corporations to buy into the concept that helping the sick and poor by providing affordable healthcare would improve individual lives and the community as a whole.
And, his vision came true. Morris has seen his center – which now has a $12 million budget fully funded by donations from individuals, faith groups and corporations – not only fulfill his mission of helping the working poor in Memphis but serve as a model for approximately 20 centers nationwide.
He drove the message home of the importance of the center by telling the story of a patient, Annie, whom he saw through breast cancer, marital abuse and AIDS and then treated her husband and grandchild.
Catholic Charities Archdiocese New Orleans has embraced Morris’s faith-based concept of quality, affordable healthcare. With a two-year developmental grant from Baptist Community Ministries, Catholic Charities has organized a 15-member advisory panel of local faith and business leaders to explore the project’s feasibility here.
“It’s still developmental,” said Guy Fournier, planning director of the Church Health Replication Project in New Orleans. “We want to build a faith-health partnership where faith and health come together to create a powerful mechanism to provide health care.”
Making progress
Over the past year, the panel has made progress, Fournier said. Two possible center sites have been identified – the now-shuttered St. Rose de Lima Catholic Church off North Broad Street near Esplanade Avenue and a former Presbyterian Church on Esplanade Avenue.
And, Kaiser Permanente, the nation’s leading nonprofit healthcare organization headquartered in Oakland, Calif., has committed to provide physicians, consultants and the financial and clinical infrastructure to open a New Orleans health center, said Dr. Elmore Rigamer, medical director of Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans.
“At the end of next year (2008), we hope that the Church Health Center becomes a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation and that the board breaks free and goes forth with it,” Rigamer said.
Rigamer said Catholic Charities will not run the center. Its involvement is in the planning stages, acting as a convener of faith groups and business partners interested in the project. He cited examples of Catholic Charities’ role in launching Unity for the Homeless and Café Reconcile before their nonprofit entities were created.
Catholic Charities will provide future assistance to the center through its myriad of resources if requested by the board, Rigamer said.
What’s ahead for the panel is cementing the decision to remain true to the center’s original mission to serve only the working uninsured with-out federal or state assistance (in the vein of Memphis) or to accept subsidies and expand the center’s clientele.
Morris thinks the project is possible in New Orleans and lauded his audience for enduring “combat fatigue” while rebuilding. But he said much more was needed and much more was possible even in a tough economic climate. He emphasized that it will take the recommitment of the faith community to God’s mission to “preach, teach and heal” and getting the healthcare and business sectors on board to do it.
“You eat an elephant one bite at a time,” Morris said. “You have incredible challenges but there is incredible opportunity.”
Christine Bordelon can be reached at cbordelon@clarionherald.org.
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