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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Robb Burlage, PhD, Public Health and Urban Planning Joint Graduate Degree Program, Columbia University, 200 West 90th Street, Suite #6E, New York, NY 10024, 917-441-1042, RBurlage@aol.com and Fanny Erickson, TheoD, Parish Life and Membership Commission, The Riverside Church, 114 Morningside Drive, New York, NY 10027.

The authors are a parish life minister at a major, inter-denominational, interracial, inner city church and a public health and urban planning professor/senior holistic health systems consultant. We describe and assess a novel recent and developing program of CAM/holistic health care and educational outreach. We are seeking to practice and demonstrate the mind-body-spirit model as a community-based public health initiative. This is with some of the nation's most health at-risk and health services/public health protection underserved populations. The minister founded and developed over two decades -- since the original HIV/AIDS epidemic -- a model holistic health, healing, and wellness program at the church for diverse congregants and the surrounding community. This was achieved with lay membership and leadership of the church and a growing and diverse number of holistic health practitioners and educators; including more recently the co-author as a developmental consultant. We are reaching out, professionally and massively together, this year for community-based partnerships with grass roots churches and non-profit organizations. This includes front line health services providers and public health programmers. We are seeking to develop this program interactively with the impacted populations. This includes widespread new services provision and educational arrangements; partnership with a new public school for neighborhood youth, a wholistic “health academy” for 6th to 12th graders; and a community forum exploring interactive issues of health services and sciences, spiritual and religious orientations, faith and community-based organizations responsibilities, and “public's health” priorities.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Identify the development over two decades of a faith-based institutional CAM-oriented program -- a model holistic health, healing, and wellness program for diverse congregants and the surrounding community; achieved with lay membership and leadership of the church and a growing and diverse number of holistic health practitioners and educators.
• 2. Define a novel emergent program of outreach for community-based partnerships with grass roots churches and non-profit organizations, including front line health services providers and public health programmers; developed interactively with the impacted populations.
• 3. Analyze and evaluate widespread new services provision and educational arrangements; partnership with a new public school for neighborhood youth, a wholistic “health academy”; and a community forum exploring interactive issues of health services and sciences, spiritual and religious orientations, faith and community-based organizations responsibilities, and “public’s health” priorities.

Keywords: Alternative Medicine/Therapies, Community Collaboration

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered