Physician Assistant
Specialty: Internal Medicine
Location: Western Asia
As the hands and feet of Jesus, the Community Health Outreach Initiative aims to encourage and spur on the local church fellowship; prayerfully reach out to the underserved and refugee families in the community to bring hope and healing; promote physical, spiritual, emotional and mental health and wellbeing; build and grow relationships with families; and show our neighbors the love of Christ through a weekly medical clinic day, follow-up home visits, and culturally appropriate health education. As a physician assistant with a background in public health, I coordinate the Community Health Outreach Project, rotate through the clinic schedule as a provider (when the clinic is operating in our church), and regularly engage in the medical home visits, providing medical care, health education, and prayer; connecting patients to needed resources in the community; and sharing Bible stories with the families in their homes.
Through the home visits, God has given us many opportunities to orally share Bible stories that point to Jesus and to pray with patients and their families. The church plant has reached out to provide volunteer medical care to families in need over the past two years, through seasonal medical days and medical home visits. These underserved communities around and near the church comprise families from diverse backgrounds, including refugees, poor and working-class locals, as well as trade laborers. In January 2020, through a partnership with a local, like-minded NGO, the church piloted a community health outreach project to demonstrate the love of Jesus and to minister to our communities’ physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental needs. The pilot included weekly Sunday medical clinics at our church as well as follow-up home visits throughout the week, with prayer offered every step of the way.