“Faith community nurses go where there is a need, and there was a need at Garden View apartments.”
That’s how Deb Fell-Carlson, founder of Faith Community Health Network (FCHN), put it.
She was talking about how her nonprofit recently received a grant to place a Health Resource Center on site at the senior residential complex. In 2022, her team helped secure an apartment there for then 69-year-old Barlow Carper and his two dogs, just days before he was about to be homeless.
It was the result of what faith community nurses do: assessing the wholistic needs of individuals in their community, not just going over the physical, emotional and mental ailments so commonly focused on in nursing school.
“When you are assessing someone and you’re having a conversation with them, you’re assessing their spiritual health, their emotional health, their mental health, their intellectual capabilities, their physical capabilities; all of that gets assessed at the same time,” Fell-Carlson said in a 2020 interview.
So while homing people is not their main focus, FCHN was able to house a couple of people because the nurses were doing what they were trained to do: see the whole picture.
After Barlow moved into his new home, Fell-Carlson would go visit him and residents would approach her, asking her health-related questions.
Should they see a physician for a particular situation? Should they wait, or go to the ER or urgent care? How can they access their MyChart?
Those were the kinds of questions Fell-Carlson was fielding.
She soon realized that what they needed was a Health Resource Center for residents who are socially isolated, elderly, disabled and/or medically frail, providing easy access to a nurse who could guide them on how to navigate their various needs.
A grant provided the answer – paying for office supplies and other resources for volunteer Tawni Pfaff to be on site at Garden View twice a month, the first and third Tuesday of each month from 9-11 a.m.
The resource center mainly aims to provide triage in order to reduce EMS calls, encourage primary care relationships for patients and doctors, provide spiritual care to socially isolated individuals, and provide navigation and referral for needed services.
What seemed like a small action became an opportunity to improve and, sometimes, even save a life.
Fell-Carlson brought back testimonies from residents who visited Pfaff at the Health Resource Center.
One resident was encouraged by the FCHN nurse to visit her doctor for a pulmonary rehab referral, and now she can walk much better and hasn’t fallen since. Another resident said she was feeling “funny” on her new medication, but didn’t want to bother her doctor. By Pfaff’s encouragement, she did contact her doctor and learned her medication was two times the dose she was supposed to take.
FCHN has been able to provide vouchers for foot care, transportation resources for medical treatments, financial resources for medication (one resident said, “I was taking my heart medicines only every other day because I haven’t been able to afford them.”), and even helpful information (one resident said, “I had been going to the emergency department almost every month. You explained the importance of hydration and helped me find a way to make sure I get enough fluid each day. I haven’t been to the ED in eight months.”).
And then there’s the message they received from a family member, who said, “If you had not contacted me right away, he could have had a serious stroke. Thank you for saving his life.”
The number of encounters has not been as critical to success as the nature of those encounters, which is preventing unnecessary burden on the healthcare system as well as preserving quality of life for the resident, Fell-Carlson reported when she and her team testified in June before the Oregon Senate Housing Committee about the pilot program’s success, by invitation from Senator Deb Patterson.
Donna Holt, executive director of Linn-Benton Housing Authority, testified that affordable housing provides stability, but supportive services and community connections allow residents to truly thrive.
“The partnership with Faith Community Health Network has been transformational,” she told the committee. “Their presence has helped residents navigate healthcare systems, access resources, improve their health outcomes, and remain connected to their community. Just as importantly, they provide something that cannot be measured on a balance sheet – human connection, dignity, and hope.”
FCHN told the committee they are looking for philanthropic funding, individual donations and reimbursement pathways for community nurses so they don’t have to rely on grants to sustain or grow the Health Resource Center program because, they said,
“a two-hour, twice-monthly nursing presence is preventing six-figure costs, saving lives, and restoring dignity and access to a population the healthcare system otherwise struggles to reach. The opportunity now is not to prove the model – it’s to scale it.”
While Pfaff volunteers her service at Garden View, Fell-Carlson noted it’s important to be able to pay younger nurses to provide the same services elsewhere because they need the income. And they can’t expand the program until they get more nurses.
And FCHN is ready to train up more nurses to answer the call, not just to staff a Health Resource Center, but to support people in their own sphere of influence on a more wholistic level.
“Faith community nursing offers an excellent opportunity for nurses transitioning away from bedside care who are not yet ready to ‘hang up their cap,’” Fell-Carlson said.
The organization offers the Foundations of Faith Community Nursing and Health Ministry courses every year, inviting nurses and faith community lay members to join a growing network of health ministry teams.
This year’s course starts Oct. 12. Scholarships are available for RNs in Linn, Benton and Lincoln counties, who would only pay $50 thanks to a grant from Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital. Nurses from outside the area pay $400. Course registration can be found at FaithCommunityHealthNetwork.org/foundations/.
For more information, visit FaithCommunityHealthNetwork.org/.