Addresses the worldwide experience of suffering through a biblically-informed perspective for the sake of the Church’s mission to a hurting world. Topics addressed in this course will include pastoral care, nursing, healthcare, and healing (both spiritual and physical) as they pertain to disease and disability. Students will be assessed on the readings and lectures through online discussion, case-studies, and service projects.

Promotion of healthly lifestyles is essential to ensuring the medical care of communities. The course will consider how to conduct advocacy research, provide education and encouragement, conduct action campaigns and how to use the church to effect change. This will be explored by considering local cultural and societal influences and determining how best to conduct outreach.

Participants will learn to research factual information, gain skill in writing persuasively, hone critical thinking skills (if this, then that), provide oral and written presentations, using a variety of formats and for multiple and various constituencies. Students must have either microsoft office or libre office programs, be fluent in chart, graph, table, as well as text and presentation formats.

What is capacity building? The course will look at how health improvement can be accomplished by working across communities, organisations and systems to increase involvement, decision making and ownership at a local level.

Key concepts and applications introduced, discussed and mastered include needs assessment, community relationships (participatory continuum), funding opportunities, writing a plan including goals and desired outcomes, sustainability, implementation and evaluation tools and models, marketing strategies, and assessment of outcomes. Participants will develop and walk through each process in community through selection of an organization/organizations to work with, seeking appropriate input, and conducting a needs assessment. Participant program plan sections and completed plan will be critiqued by peers and graded by instructor.

In a time of greater need of resources, shrinking pool of resources, and a greater need for accountability to serve the health of community, building partnerships is necessary to eliminate duplication, ensure that the same goals are being espoused by multiple healthcare agencies and services. The health of a community will only improve with key resources working together and buy in by constituencies.