"Rural America" conjures up warm, innocent images from Norman Rockwell paintings. Today, however, small town America could not be further from this picture. Broken homes, epidemic drug abuse, staggering unemployment, and paralyzing depression have ravaged these once nostalgic streets. We’re not in Mayberry anymore!
God has called all of us to serve, yet medical missions in rural America have been neglected due to the needs of other parts of the world. When we survey the desperate needs in less populated areas and the lack of access to quality healthcare, it is obvious there is a deficiency. Rural hospitals are closing. Funding is low. Providers are led to other more “obvious” mission fields. In reality, 46.2 million people live in nonmetropolitan counties — that’s nearly 15 percent of U.S. residents spread across 72 percent of the Nation's land area. Who will care for the rural poor?
Dr. Thomas will share about his journey from India to Appalachia. He serves as the Medical Director at Dayspring Family Health Center and co-pastors a local church, answering a call to serve vulnerable and marginalized communities. Despite the many challenges of such a ministry, he is learning to experience the rich rewards of caring for the least of these in rural Tennessee. Listen as he shares his stories of serving God in a way he never asked or imagined.
Before we can understand God's will for us, we must first understand his overarching plan to glorify himself among all nations. This breakout session will explore God's mission and our response to him, common barriers that prevent us from surrendering to God's mission, and disciplines that prepare us to do God's will.
The United States is a much overlooked field in global missions. 96 million people live in areas designated as medically underserved. All of those are communities where poverty is rampant and resources are low. Not only are those areas of great need, they are areas of tremendous opportunity where the harvest is ripe for the gospel. The Director of Christian Community Health Fellowship will share an overview of the issues impacting this cross-cultural domestic mission field, and will discuss how Christian health professionals are intentionally living out the gospel through healthcare among the poor in the United States.
Moved by our compassion and the example of Christ to care for vulnerable and marginalized people suffering the ravages of disease, our response is often to build a clinic and send doctors and nurses to provide care. However, that assumes that if we build the clinic, people will come and if they come, they and their families will get healthy and stay healthy. Together we will explore the meaning of “health”, what is Community-Based Primary Health Care, and learn about three methodologies for prevention and cure at the community level..
Contemporary criticism by global health experts of much of short term medical missions activity (Dead Aid, When Helping Hurts) is valid. We have a tendency to justify use of US diagnostic and treatment guidelines in low income countries as equitable while demonstrably unreasonable and harmful. Careful consideration of the whole care process from care access to care follow-up including all costs including harms and benefits coupled with compassion leads to cost-effective, patient-centric care
