UNCG’s health outreach partnership makes front-page news

Posted on January 06, 2014

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Repost from UNCG Now

Organizers of the recent Healthcare Faith Community Summit in Greensboro, including Bob Wineburg, professor of social work and director of community-engaged scholarship for UNCG’s School of Health and Human Services, were profiled in a front-page story Sunday in the News & Record.

Columnist Jeri Rowe highlighted the work of Wineburg and Odell Cleveland, chief administrative officer at Mount Zion Baptist Church, who on Nov. 14 brought together faith leaders, health professionals, educators, business leaders and nonprofit providers to focus on health care issues facing the Greensboro community and to explore what can be done to tackle them. The summit drew more than 700 people, including Melissa Rogers, executive director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Rogers asked organizers to prepare a full report, which they plan to release Friday at Evans-Blount Community Health Center.

Pictured (from left): UNCG professors Vincent Francisco and Bob Wineburg, Melissa Rogers of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and Odell Cleveland of Mount Zion Baptist Church.

“People are looking for models to come from somewhere else. Harvard. Princeton. And Yale,” Wineburg told the News & Record. “But we have it right here. Why not Greensboro?”

Cleveland, a Baptist minister and adjunct professor at UNCG who teaches a class with Wineburg, told the News & Record that houses of worship can be portals of entry for affordable health care.

The two men, along with UNCG professor Vincent Francisco, spent months planning the summit. Featured sessions included a look at the state of the community’s health, faith-based congregational health care programs and a primer on the federal Affordable Care Act.

Update: Download the Guilford County Healthcare Faith Summit 2013 Report.

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