Michigan repurposes COVID testing sites to reduce health disparities
- Michigan spends $17 million to convert 22 COVID-19 testing sites into Neighborhood Wellness Centers
- The new centers offer essential health screenings in a welcoming space, especially for poor and marginalized people whose alternative is an ER.
- At least seven of the 22 sites also will offer Narcan and drug prevention literature as part of additional funds from opioid settlement dollars.
Four years after church basements and fellowship rooms became battlegrounds in the fight against COVID-19, they are getting new life in the fight against health disparities.
Michigan invested $17 million to transform 22 pandemic testing sites into Neighborhood Wellness Centers this summer. The sites perform routine medical tests and screenings and can serve as crisis and warming centers.
“The church belongs to the community,” said New Hope’s Virgil Humes, long-time pastor of New Hope Missionary Baptist of Wayne, in southeast Michigan. “It should be a connector to the community.”
The project is a result of the Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities, which was created by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the early weeks of the pandemic, when COVID was killing Black Michiganders at twice the rate of their white counterparts.
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In addition to centers located in 20 churches, others are located at Wayne County Community College District’s Northwest Campus in Detroit and Albion College in Albion. (Find the list of centers here.) Most of the efforts are centered in southeast Michigan, but there’s a center in Muskegon, Niles, Albion, Flint, Lansing and Grand Rapids as well.
Access to health care, income and other socioeconomic factors are among the causes of disparities that impact the wellbeing of people of color in Michigan.
Among other things, Black Michiganders are nearly twice as likely to die prematurely as white residents, nearly three times as likely to have an infant die and live significantly shorter than white residents (67.9 years for Black men in 2022 compared to 76.1 years for white men.)
The centers still offer COVID testing, but have expanded to provide screenings for blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol, crisis support and will eventually include dental care and mammograms.
In addition to medical staff, state funding pays for on-site community health workers that help visitors access resources for food, transportation and housing, or make referrals to primary care providers and services for older Michiganders.
Seven Detroit-area sites also will pilot substance use prevention, funded by $250,000 from a lawsuit settlement with opioid manufacturers and distributors. Those locations will offer free Naloxone, which reverses opioid overdoses, and offer prevention education.
Governments nationwide partner with churches on everything from EV battery charging stations to suicide prevention and food banks.
The wellness centers can help reduce the crush on local emergency rooms that often serve as de facto medical treatment for those without insurance, said Avery Burrel, pastor at Christ Temple Church in Muskegon.
“It just makes sense,” Burrel said.
At New Hope in Detroit, Humes said the church provided housing during emergencies and meals for essential workers during COVID. The church helped the state administer 247,594 tests by the time an update report was published in February 2022, according to the state.
The church also offers regular health fairs and asks congregants monthly to wear red, in part, to remind them of the importance of health, Humes said.
Now, said New Hope’s Benita Threadgill, who as executive administrative assistant to the pastor helped coordinate the church’s wellness center: “The possibilities are endless.”
“We have the possibility of being a one-stop shop (to fight) the things that are killing our community,” Threadgill said.
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