by Kris Aaron
It all came together organically. CBFVA has a new partnership with the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP), a non-partisan organization that works with people of all faiths around the issues of racial, social, and economic justice, and the Health Equity Manager for VICPP, Kathryn Haines, just happened to have a meeting scheduled in Southwest Virginia. So, after exchanging emails with Mark and Laura, I was introduced to Kathryn, and we quickly organized a meeting for clergy at First Baptist Bristol during her swing through the southwestern part of the state.
The meeting itself was a perfect encapsulation of the kind of work that CBFVA does. First, the meeting leaned heavily on listening and learning from one another. For the clergy, we learned more about the good work done by VICPP. Kathryn was gracious in listening to the perspectives and experiences of people who reside in a different part of the commonwealth than her. Through her listening, she was able to hear and learn about the healthcare difficulties being experienced by people living in rural areas. Equally important, however, were the people at this meeting. In addition to Mark and Laura joining us via Zoom, we also had Keith Stillwell from Together for Hope – Appalachia, an organization that specializes in coalition building, and a number of clergy. Now, these clergy represented a large swath of the community here and not just a tiny portion of it. The gathering was both multi-racial and multi-denominational and filled with gifted ministers, both men and women, who are serving their churches faithfully. Through the listening and learning done by both Kathryn and the clergy, we quickly realized that while the problem is large, there are tangible things that we can do now to begin to improve the quality of care for people living in rural areas.
For those of you living in urban or suburban areas, you might not realize just how much of a beating healthcare is taking in small towns right now. Many communities are seeing their local hospitals close, and even those that aren’t are seeing their hospitals hollowed out. Post-COVID, there is a shockingly low number of specialists in rural hospitals across the country, particularly in Southwest Virginia, and that number is getting steadily lower. Even worse, hospitals in these rural areas are struggling to attract new physicians to take these open positions. It becomes a domino effect, and one of the groups most affected is senior adults. Senior adults, of which our churches are largely comprised, now have to travel ever further to see cardiologists, endocrinologists, and other specialists, and their wait times are becoming ever longer, too. That’s why so many seniors are now leaving small towns and rural areas, for healthcare along with a whole host of other reasons.
Advocacy work, one of the priorities of CBFVA, is vitally important. It’s vitally important because advocacy work seeks to make the world a more just and equitable place for all people – not just the people we don’t know from a place we’ve never been, but for our friends and neighbors and fellow church members in the communities in which we reside. And when it comes to such work, CBFVA was right where it always is, at the center of it all – listening, learning, building coalitions, and making sure the people in the room look like the communities they represent. That’s why I and the good folks of First Baptist Bristol are so proud to minister alongside and support CBFVA, and why we would encourage you to do the same. After all, you never know how such a partnership might enable you to better look after the people in your own community, the people within the walls of your own church.