Resources

The session focuses on the use of the Holistic Worldview Analysis (HWVA) tool and explains how it is used to understand a community’s worldview, analyze it, identify gaps in their current survival strategy, and engage the community actively in addressing health and development issues. If you are looking for a way to empower a community to be able to solve most of its own problems, then this is a session for you!

The Community Health Model Village is also known as the Total Health Village or the ‘THV-50-40-10(R)’. This model of healthcare looks at not only providing healthcare for those who are sick, but focuses a great deal on prevention of disease (through focus on water, sanitation, vaccination, deworming) and also on holistic well being (food security, livelihood security, education and skill building). The strategy involves modern participatory techniques for carrying out needs assessment, gap analysis,
and intervention planning. Development is facilitated through the community’s own resource persons and geared towards empowering the community to solve most of their own problems. The model goes way beyond integrated development to address both the empirical and spiritual needs of the community through balanced holistic development.

There is an increase in morbidity and mortality for trafficked victims based upon circumstances while being trafficked and preexisting conditions that led to
their vulnerability to being trafficked. It is known that most healthcare professionals do not know how to identify and help trafficked victims. This session will discuss the health problems that may present, the reasons for these conditions, and the clues
that may lead to recognizing these victims as trafficked and ultimately to help free them.

Community Health Screening & Education aims to assist communities, both urban and rural, in the US as well as developing countries, in their efforts to resolve their most important healthcare problems. It is based on national and international evidence-based standards and guidelines which were often developed and/or strongly influenced by our Christian missionary mentors. Although primarily focused on the 70% of the disease burden that is preventable, it enables high quality assistance in curative care areas as well. All of the materials and guidelines referenced are available free for downloading through www.hepfdc.info and related links, and most are available in multiple languages. So although the healthcare problems addressed remain the leading causes of premature death and unnecessary suffering in nearly every community in every country, it is emphasized that organizations and communities already have access to the resources to begin to resolve those problems. There is much that qualified STM doctors, pharmacists, and other providers can do to assist communities in this collaborative, Biblically-based approach which also preserves the benefits of the provider-patient healing relationship, without the harmful effects due to drugs.

This session will explore the distinctive characteristics of Christian medical missions compared to humanitarian missions. It will look at biblical guidelines for ministering in Jesus’ name and examine practical applications for those engaged in Christian medical missions.

Resilient, balanced, resourceful, and culturally sensitive expatriates galvanize cross-cultural ventures. Mental health is the bedrock; yet, a surfeit of narrative disparages global enterprise because of misfortune provoked by psychological maladies. Expectations
are realigned when the epidemiology of mental health disorders are considered
in the context of complex cross-cultural transitions. Predisposing attributes, demands and awareness of risk foster a resolve to care. Evidence-based practice aligns expertise; care combines “best practice” with sensitivity to points of access on the substrate of the recipient’s worldview.

This session will give a brief overview of the problem of macronutrient malnutrition (protein-energy malnutrition), its pathophysiology as a “metabolic disorder,” its diagnosis, and best practices to ensure optimum outcomes highlighting the WHOs ten step approach.

This session addresses the difficult question: “If God
is good and wants us to be healthy, why do we get sick and die?” I tell the story of my wife who went “safely home” in spite of medicine, much prayer, and inner healing, and the new lessons about life and disease I have learned from this.

Nutritional deficiencies continue to plague many children in resource-limited areas. Current knowledge in the “developed” world is not always adequate in determining how to care
for affected children in “developing” countries,
and fresh research can be useful in helping children
all over the world. Using examples of studies of generalized malnutrition and of deficiencies of calcium, vitamin D, and thiamine, participants will gain an understanding of how low-cost investigations carried out in resource-limited areas can have high-yield in advancing science and in curing children.

The session outlines resources of the biblical worldview and how they transformed the culture of Europe and the Near East in the first centuries after Christ, the culture of Great Britain in the 18th Century, and of South Korea in the 20th Century. The session describes what we, as Christian healthcare providers, must do to bring transformation to the peoples and cultures of Africa, Haiti, Latin America, and other non-developing areas of the world.

Research provides a means of helping many people in many places over many years. And, it is possible to do useful research “on the field” in the midst of a busy clinical practice. This session will review possibilities and principles that lead to science-advancing, patient- helping, resource-affordable clinical research.