Building capacity of faith and public health leaders: Aligning perspectives to eliminate health inequities

The Institute for Faith and Public Leadership seeks to create and strengthen partnerships between faith entities and public health institutions in a manner that enhances their collective capacity to address the health disparities that are created by inequities rooted in complex and difficult problems such as classicism, racism, sexism and poverty. Much of the activity in faith and public health partnerships focuses on individual programs such as mass vaccinations, screening and health education. By strengthening sustainable relationships between two non-traditional partners we can achieve greater impact in addressing health inequity. Drawing on the principles and learnings from the MidAmerica Regional Public Health Leadership Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health and the Institute for Public Health and Faith Collaborations at the Interfaith Health Program at Emory University, The MidAmerica Public Health Training Center and The Center for Faith and Community Health Transformation developed the Faith and Public Health Leadership Institute. This training series explores the theme from the lens of the faith community and the lens of public health, and then brings the two lenses into focus in “shared seeing.” The main objective of the Institute is to spark imagination for faith and health collaborations that go beyond programs to more organic initiatives. Practitioners learn how to identify and utilize the unique assets/gifts that both disciplines use to eliminate health inequity. Lessons learned from two years of implementation of this Institute will be discussed and focus on topics such as recruitment, curriculum development, and evaluation.