Community Support Groups and Outreach

Health Ministry Project
The Florida Department of Health Diabetes Prevention and Control Program (DPCP) is concerned about the numbers of Floridians with or at risk for developing diabetes. It has asked Rural Health Partnership (RHP) to help build community capacity for self management, support, or intervention programs and services for people with or at risk for diabetes.  
 
Because so many of our residents are members of churches and other faith-based facilities, we are trying to help local faith-based institutions reach their members with health promotion programs. As you likely already know, churches and other religious organizations can influence members' behaviors at multiple levels of change.
 
The initial phase of our project is to identify which churches and other religious organizations are interested in a health ministry—a program to arm members with information and in some cases, services to help them stay healthy and well.

We plan to provide a training program and identify appropriate health information resources for parties that do not have a health ministry but are interested in starting one.

For those faith-based organizations that currently have a health ministry, our goal is to link them with other health ministries to form a network for support and community collaboration and provide a diabetes self-management education program to help church members with diabetes find better ways to control it.