Congregations, Communities and Health

"At the core of every major faith tradition stands an explicit commitment to be with the sick, the poor, the alienated, the marginal, the wounded, and the dying. The commitments are very old, but the implications are ever new."
Gary Gunderson
Interfaith Health Program, Carter Center

It's not impossible to dream of thousands of congregations working alongside public health, sharing an understanding that health is a seamless whole-physical, mental, social, spiritual-that poverty and illiteracy and addiction and prejudice and pollution and violence and hopelessness and fatalism are forms of brokenness, diseases that require the deployment of both their assets in building whole, healthy communities.
William Foege, MD, MPH

Over 100 years ago, people of faith came together to attend to the health needs of people in their communities. Out of their vision and passion, Advocate Health Care was formed. In keeping with this history, Advocate's Congregational Health Partnerships (CHP) department supports the many ways congregations continue to work to promote health, healing and wholeness.

Advocate Parish Nurse Ministry demonstrates a response to those needs through a unique partnership with congregations. This partnership provides a community based nursing program whose population is the faith community.

Each Advocate Health Care hospital also has community wellness initiatives in the surrounding community, as well as many other health programs.