Healthcare Christian Fellowship International

Inspire and equip Christian workers in healthcare

Outreaches

MEDICAL OUTREACHES 

Definition

Medical Outreaches are activities where short-term integral healthcare services are provided by members of HCF to local communities. This can be organized by the national HCF alone or preferably in partnership with other Christian organizations who share their vision and values.

Medical outreach is a practical way of demonstrating the love of God in the health field

Reasons for an HCF medical outreach

The two acceptable reasons for an HCF medical outreach:

  1. Disaster relief situations
  2. Integration with Integral Community Health programs, especially in the phase of entering into communities.

Important

Medical Outreaches need to build strong connections with Integral Community Health (ICH) Projects as well as with the government healthcare services in the communities where the outreaches are held. If such connections do not yet exist, the Medical Outreach teams should involve the ICH ministry in deciding what could be done for synergy between the medical outreaches and the integral community health projects. Contact the ICH ministry.

The organizers of medical outreaches should read “When Helping Hurts” by Corbett and Fikkert before they even begin to organize the outreaches.

Best Practice Elements of Medical Outreaches

Partnership

Teams prioritize a relationship with a local entity and agree to cooperate while working toward a defined goal for a significant period of time. The relationships with the local partners should be: Collaborative (no party dominates, all parties share vision and values, working together as equals); Impact focused (producing long-term positive results for the communities); Enabling (giving access to ideas and training resources); Mutually transforming (all parties learning from one another and being transformed as a result); Synergistic (combined effect larger than individual efforts). This would usually require an annual repetition of the medical outreach in the same community until the agreed-upon goals have been achieved.

Education

Teams foster an environment of learning for local practitioners and community members through training events and lectures for local personnel and community members. The ICH ministry has excellent materials available on many relevant topics, written according to WHO standards.

People become followers of Jesus, and whole communities are lifted out of cycles of poverty and disease
Communities are equipped to identify issues and mobilize resources to achieve positive, sustainable change
Lives and communities are transformed as people work together to address local needs and follow Christ
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Evaluation

Teams recognize the need for reflection and feedback from partners, patients and team members in order to improve the success of their intervention.

Sustainability

Teams work toward having a lasting impact on the population with whom they interact while positively influencing health outcomes. The best way to do this is to seek synergy with an Integral Community Health program in the relevant community.

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Taking integral healthcare into communities