Connecting faith and the community for a healthier lifestyle
When it comes to healthier eating and exercising more we often get discouraged with the busy, fast-paced world we live in, and with confusing marketing messages around healthy food, we tend to stick to tried and true recipes we know our family will eat and enjoy. Which leads me to ask, what spaces of your life do you feel supported and encouraged to try new things or set new goals? Maybe it’s with your family or with a local club or group of friends. For many, it is within their faith community.
Novant Health’s Faith Network and N.C. Cooperative Extension is inspiring faith communities to be health champions. Novant Health’s Faith Health Network promotes better health through offering health information and resources to the community, teaching disease strategies to improve health outcomes, improving access to healthcare, and providing encouragement toward wellness and wholeness. Partnering with communities of faith to train Faith Community Nurses and Faith Health Promoters who can bridge faith and medicine promotes health and wholeness of mind, body and spirit for individuals, congregations and the community. Faith community nursing was formally recognized as a specialty by the American Nursing Associate in 1998. A Faith Community Nurse is required to complete an approved training to support holistic health and provide spiritual care in a faith community. If there is not a registered nurse within a faith community, a layperson with a passion for caring can fill the need by receiving training to become a faith community Health Promoter. Benefits of affiliation with the program include a strong leadership structure and established program in faith community health ministry, ongoing education for nurses and health promoters, regional access to valuable Novant Health resources, access for members to the appropriate community agencies and services, and coordination of specific health promotion programs to fit the identified health needs of the congregation. N.C. Cooperative Extension is one of the community agencies that provides hands-on, research-based, and easily accessible classes on cooking techniques and nutrition.
Betty Ferencak, a Faith Community Nurse and local church member, recently gathered church members to participate in a six week nutrition education program through N.C. Cooperative Extension. She described the program as allowing members to honor God while improving health, losing weight, and trying new foods while in fellowship with each other. Each week Faith Community Nurses took blood pressure and weighed participants, participants tried a new recipe, and they learned about ways to eat healthier. “The information was easy to understand and was well received by all,” Ferencak said. “Every church community should consider offering this program to their parishioners.”
Faith communities play an important role in supporting community health and decreasing health disparities. We invite any faith community to be a part of this program that builds on the connection between faith and health while encouraging conversations within the group and increasing individual knowledge on how to live a healthier lifestyle.
Morgan King is the Family & Consumer Sciences Agent for N.C. Cooperative Extension in New Hanover County. The office is located at the Arboretum, 6206 Oleander Drive, and is free and open daily 8 am - 5 pm. Contact her at morgan_king@ncsu.edu or 910-798-7660. Sarah Arthur and Christy Spivey from Novant New Hanover Regional Medical Center contributed to this article.
This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Health champions: Novant Health’s Faith Network, N.C. Cooperative Extension
