Community Involvement
Memphis Healthy Churches
In 1998, Christ Community Health Services founded this church-based, educational, preventive health program, initially to provide breast cancer education and referral assistance. Now, through a partnership with Baptist, the program has been expanded to address multiple health concerns in the African-American population, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, maternal and newborn health, as well as all types of cancer.

In addition to providing organic funding, Baptist is a proud sponsor of Memphis Healthy Churches’ mission to provide the African-American population with health and wellness programs. Since becoming a partner, Baptist has provided thousands of dollars in free health screenings to the member churches in this program.

Memphis Healthy Churches trains church representatives to become health ambassadors for their congregations, since their church is a convenient and comfortable site for this population to access information on health care. Today, Memphis Healthy Churches supports more than 75 congregations with more than 50,000 African-American members through 150 trained health representatives.

Other Memphis Healthy Churches services include a quarterly newsletter, health fairs and workshops, a resource room, a speaker’s bureau, free health screenings, counseling and support groups related to various diseases. Since 1998, more than 54,800 people have attended 254 health fairs sponsored by Memphis Healthy Churches. Memphis Healthy Churches also helped provide hundreds of free screening mammograms, many of them first-time screenings for African-American women 35 and older.

For information, please contact:
Baptist Memorial Health Care
Community Involvement Department
350 N. Humphreys Blvd.
Memphis, TN 38120
Phone: 901-227-5324
Fax: 901-227-7179
E-mail: community.involvement@bmhcc.org