Content Resources

A review of the lessons learned from surveys of mission hospitals in 7 developing countries to identify the key best practices that have been successful at improving the spiritual ministry of the hospital, involving staff more fully and improving effectiveness of evangelism with patients and families.

Living "incarnationally" (among a culture different from your own), especially among marginalized people (the poor, immigrants, etc.) is a proven way to face your own cultural biases, muster courage, learn greater dependence on the Holy Spirit, and develop meaningful relationships with people very different from yourself. Besides being good for your soul, it's ideal preparation for international healthcare missions. 

Are you in Medical School? Pre-Med? Mid-level Training? Come hear practical steps to make your dream of serving a reality. When you have a heart for God’s people and a passion for medicine, how do they connect? How do you prepare? This workshop is extremely practical when you know you want to use your medical vocation for Kingdom purposes.

This session will look at the reality of suffering in this world and how to reorient our hearts and minds to face it well.

About 25 years ago, while sharing an early morning cup of coffee with my dear friend and practice partner, family physician John Hartman, MD, he asked, “Walt, how come we don’t bring our faith to work with us more often?” It was a question the Lord used to convict me of the fact that although my personal relationship with God was the primary and most important relationship in my life, more often than not I tended to leave Him at the door when entering the hospital or medical office. The question was the catalyst for this talk: Spiritual Interventions in Patient Care. Research findings, a desire to provide high-quality care, and simple common sense, all underscore the need to integrate spirituality into patient care. It is highly ethical for healthcare professionals and healthcare systems to assess their patients’ spiritual health and needs and to provide indicated and desired spiritual interventions. Clinicians and health care systems should not deprive their patients of the spiritual support and comfort on which their hope, health, wellbeing, and longevity may hinge. Before you get started, I must share this caution from Stephen Post, PhD: “Professional problems can occur when well-meaning healthcare professionals ‘faith-push’ a patient opposed to discussing religion.” However, on the other side of the coin, “rather than ignoring faith completely with all patients, most of whom want to discuss it, we can explore which of our patients are interested and who are not.” Simply put, a spiritual assessment can help us do this with each patient we see. We can potentially gain the following from a spiritual assessment: The patient’s religious background, The role that religious or spiritual beliefs or practices play in coping with illness (or causing distress), Beliefs that may influence or conflict with decisions about medical care,  The patient’s level of participation in a spiritual community and whether the community is supportive, and ‹ Any spiritual needs that might be present. Several fairly-easy-to-use mnemonics have been designed to help health professionals, such as the “GOD” spiritual assessment I developed for CMDA’s Saline Solution: G = God: − May I ask your faith background? Do you have a spiritual or faith preference? Is God, spirituality, religion or spiritual faith important to you now, or has it been in the past? O = Others: − Do you now meet with others in religious or spiritual community, or have you in the past? If so, how often? How do you integrate with your faith community? D = Do: − What can I do to assist you in incorporating your spiritual or religious faith into your medical care? Or, is there anything I can do to encourage your faith? May I pray with or for you? However, this and other spiritual assessment tools fail to inquire about a critical item involving spiritual health: any religious struggles the patient may be having. A robust literature shows religious struggles can predict mortality, as there is an inverse association between faith and morbidity and mortality of various types. Sir William Osler, one of the founding professors of Johns Hopkins Hospital and frequently described as the “Father of Modern Medicine,” wrote, “Nothing in life is more wonderful than faith…the one great moving force which we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucibIe - mysterious, indefinable, known only by its effects, faith pours out an unfailing stream of energy while abating neither jot nor tittle of its potence.” You can experience that driving force of faith when you apply these principles of spiritual assessment in your practice of healthcare, thereby allowing you to minister to your patients in ways you never imagined possible, while also increasing personal and professional satisfaction. One doctor recently shared with me, “Ministering in my practice has allowed God to bear fruit in and through me in new and wonderful ways. I can’t wait to see what He’s going to do in and through me each day. My practice and I have been transformed.”

Brain drain of healthcare workers is a huge challenge in low income countries, particularly in rural areas, and yet these locations represent arguably the greatest healthcare needs in the world. This session will discuss rural medical education as a potential solution to brain drain in raising up compassionate, competent healthcare workers in the local setting.

This session will address five common misconceptions about missions that are based on assumptions and conspire to prevent people from exploring their own fit in mission.

this session will describe the magnitude of human trafficking in the US and globally. It will look at the typical health problems of this group , clues that a patient may be a trafficked victim, and suggestions for treatment principles for them

Using a Functional Medicine Model as a Paradigm to Help Our Patients with Chronic Illness Improve

A Partnership with long term missionaries, Indigenous evangelists and a short term medical training team in one of the most persecuted areas in the world brings light to the darkness.

Ten days ago, Alabama reported that they had zero confirmed cases of COVID-19. When pressed, it turns out that Alabama had done almost no testing. This inspired Dr. Robert Record, CEO for Christ Health Center (CHC) in Birmingham, to take the initiative to find testing for their patients. Last week Christ Health Center, in partnership with Church of the Highlands and a local testing lab, opened a drive-through testing center. In five days they performed 2267 tests. They have received just over 2200 results back, and had 73 people test positive for COVID-19. Robert had a contact with the founder of a private testing lab who had been trying to implement testing, but was overwhelmed. He visited his friend one Saturday, and listened to him talk about the challenges that the lab was not prepared to meet. Robert proposed that Christ Health set up and do the tests, while allowing the lab to process the respiratory panels, which is what they were good at doing. Robert and his team met with the leaders of Church of the Highlands, a mega church where Dr. Record and a number of the staff attend, and a church that has been a close partner throughout the development of CHC. In only a few days they designed a drive-through testing model that is a national model of efficiency, trained staff and a small army of volunteers, published a video, and implemented the largest testing center in the state, and one of the largest in the country. If all of this sounds like something slapped together, watch this nine-minute video: https://www.covid19-testing.churchofthehighlands.com. It is impressive. Almost immediately, Dr. Record and his team began thinking about how those who would test positive would receive care. As he was praying early one morning, he got a picture in his head of what they should do. They trained UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham), which is the largest hospital system and employer in the state, how to do the testing. Christ Health has now turned their drive-through testing over to them. Simultaneously, they constructed four “bubble rooms” in the building next to their clinic to care for sick patients. These plywood and plexiglass exam rooms allow the doctor to interact with the patient, but from the safety of being on the other side of the glass. They instituted a text-to-access system for positive patients. They started seeing COVID+ patients today (3/25) to work out any bugs in their system. Christ Health’s medical director, Dr. Cleon Rogers, is overseeing “COVID-Care” for the 73 positive cases that they tested who are not hospitalized, plus is taking non-UAB patients who test positive through UAB’s efforts. They provide safe, best-practice care for all of their COVID positive patients primarily through telehealth calls and visits. They do frequent telehealth check-ins—daily for high severity patients, and every other day for low severity patients. They created an internal “off label” use protocol in conjunction with academic infectious disease and cardiology to offer hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin treatment with informed consent for their high risk COVID positive patients. They provide wholistic care for their COVID positive patients, including, where needed, food and prescription delivery, and spiritual care. They do this in collaboration with their church partners. While they are only six days into this COVID-Care program, so far none of their patients have required hospitalization. “Being able to keep 73 people at home is huge! And we are not just providing for those 73. Each one of them live with family members, and we are providing this care to everyone in the house during their quarantine”, said Dr. Rogers. If this model proves fruitful, Dr. Rogers will be sharing this resource with the medical community soon via a paper and video. We post those links on the CCHF website when they become available. How has this impacted their other primary care efforts? Christ Health does a fairly large volume of behavioral health work, and those visits seem unphased so far. In terms of medical visits, they continue to see their mental health and higher risk patients, but in-office volume is down by about 50%. The rest of their work is going forward through telehealth. You might wonder how all of their efforts are funded. Christ Health is an FQHC, and some of the visits and testing are billable. But uninsured patients are tested for free, and they opted to not collect any copays for their insured patients. They raised no money for any of this. “We were ‘action first’, and then trust God for resources. We don’t want to be fiscally irresponsible, but God has met both us and our patients.” said Dr. Record. “We saw what was and wasn’t happening, and we entered into the pain of our patients and my friend at the lab. We knew we had to do something, and show that it could be done quickly.” Private funders, having heard about their work, have sent unrequested donations after the fact. That has helped. The state health department has provided little or no help. The government mechanism was simply moving too slow. To date, 80% of COVID-19 testing statewide is being done by the private lab that partners with Christ Health; and 25% of all COVID positive patients in Alabama are now receiving care through Christ Health. Dr. Record, Dr. Rogers, and their team are well ahead of most of us in the CCHF community, and wide open to share processes and procedures with other CCHF clinics. Dr. Record: “If you are going to share one thing with the other clinics, tell them that we need to turn our attentions, energy, and resources from testing to treatment. That is where we need to be leading at this point in the curve.” Dr. Rogers: “We should not underestimate the impact of spiritual care for these patients. God has opened doors for me to provide meaningful spiritual ministry to my patients every day.” Download full ebook "A Healthcare Worker's Response to COVID-19" here​

The origination of the idea behind 'A Practical Guide to the Complex Issue of Addiction' was to approach battling addiction from a non-medical practitioners experience and view of addiction and those suffering from addiction. The session painted a broad picture of addiction locally, around the country and around the world to set up the question, 'What do I do about it?' From there, we discussed practical signs and symptoms of someone battling addiction and action steps for those wishing to help. In the midst of this, we discovered that truly helping someone battling addiction oftentimes requires some of the most difficult decisions of your life. Through real-life examples, attendee participation and practical application, hopefully attendees and listeners can find a nugget of hope in the midst of the devastating effects of addiction.