Churches in Georgia become telehealth hubs to help rural residents expand their limited access to health care

Church leaders discuss health and wellness outreach in rural Georgia. (Photo by Chamberlain Smith, UGA)

Churches often serve as a rural area's central hub. Some in rural Georgia are adding a telehealth partnership to their community outreach, reports Leigh Beeson of the University of Georgia. The program "Fishers of Men" was developed to address lack of access to health care; its mission "is to create telehealth hubs at participating churches, with support from the UGA Archway Partnership. These hubs have widescreen TVs, computers, internet capabilities, and various other devices, such as scales, to facilitate medical appointments and educational seminars on health and managing chronic conditions."

The program's began with a pharmacist, Henry Young, and an IT professional, Sarah Jones, who wanted to address lack of access to health care. "With a Department of Agriculture grant of just under $1 million in 2020, the Fishers of Men project—a partnership encompassing more than 20 different churches from the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance and the Georgia Union Missionary Baptist Association—was born." The program faces the challenges of limited broadband access and adoption, but churches are using hotspots while Young's team continues to chisel out workarounds.

An additional grant "is helping the Fishers implement a new branch of the program: the Centers for Disease Control's Diabetes Prevention Program." Caleb Snead, who works on the Fishers project, told Beeson, "We study how people can't get to the resources they need, but that's not an excuse for us. We have to bring ourselves, that education, those preventive measures to the community."

"Young is thinking of advertising the new diabetes prevention program in local papers," Beeson adds. "And he and the pastors and deacons of an ever-growing list of churches are setting up workshops to train diabetes program facilitators who will help guide people on their health journey." Young told Beeson, "It's a true community-academic partnership. We're aligning what the community wants and needs with our strengths. We're reducing the barriers that prevent people from getting the health care and resources they need when they need it."

Georgia is one of the 10 states, mostly in the South, that have not expanded Medicaid under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which advocates say would be the best way to expand rural health care.