News Releases

News Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: April 12, 2006
For more information, contact Virginia Elliott, Vice President for Programs, 620-662-8586

United Methodist Health Ministry Fund announces health grants

Hutchinson, KS—The United Methodist Health Ministry Fund announces new grants totaling over $288,000 for health-related projects in Kansas. The Health Fund grants an average of nearly $3 million each year to support health projects in its three strategic focus areas: access to health care, oral health, and healthy nutrition and exercise.

Kansas Health Ethics, Wichita, will receive $55,200 over three years to expand its services to ethics committees of organizations such as hospitals and long-term care facilities. Kansas Health Ethics plans to strengthen its education offerings, consultation services, and technical assistance programs designed to establish or revitalize ethics committees in a variety of healthcare organizations. Ethics committees, explains KHE director Patresa Ebersole, assure the development, promotion, and protection of values while providing an opportunity for dialogue to clarify ethical and legal concerns, aspects of fiscal responsibility, and guides for making complex decisions in the healthcare industry. The organization will continue to provide education and assistance with advance care planning as well.

The Kansas Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies (KACCRRA), based in Salina, will receive $180,000 to implement a program to help prevent early childhood obesity. Healthy Kansas Kids is aimed at the more than 8,000 child care providers throughout Kansas. It will offer training on the use of programs developed in Kansas to encourage increased physical activity and healthy food choices for young children. Small grants will also be available for up to 120 selected child care facilities to purchase supplies and equipment to enhance the use of the physical activity/nutrition programs.

The We Care Project will receive $45,000 to establish a dental clinic at its community health center location in Great Bend. The clinic will provide dental services on a sliding scale fee based on income and will serve children covered by Medicaid and HealthWave public insurance programs. Clinic services will be primarily for children. The new clinic is expected to open in June. We Care provides medical and behavioral health services on a sliding scale fee basis for residents of Barton and Pawnee counties. The clinic started an exercise and nutrition program, Shape Up and Slim Down, with the help of a Health Fund grant last year.

The Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Office of Minority Health, is hosting its annual Health Disparities Conference on April 13-14 at the Maner Conference Center, Topeka Capitol Plaza Hotel. The conference brings together individuals and institutions from across the state to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, skills, and other resources to address the impact of health disparities among racial and ethnic populations in Kansas. The Health Fund is providing $3,000 toward the costs of this event.

The Leawood United Methodist Church has been awarded a $5,000 grant to help establish a Health and Wellness Ministry to serve the congregation and the community. Grant funding will be used to purchase medical equipment, supplies, and other health ministry resources. The grant project director is Rev. Pamela Harris, MD, and the pastor of Leawood UMC is Rev. Rob Winger.

Under the Health Fund’s Healthy Congregations initiative, start-up grants of up to $5,000 are available to local United Methodist churches to stimulate the development of comprehensive congregational health and wellness ministries. It is the hope of the Health Fund that these one-time grants, added to local church resources, will mobilize strong volunteer efforts to address many facets of health, healing, and wholeness in congregations and communities throughout Kansas.

Based in Hutchinson, the mission of the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund is “Healthy Kansans through cooperative and strategic philanthropy guided by Christian principles.” Its funding comes from an endowment established in 1986 by the Kansas West Conference of the United Methodist Church from a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Wesley Hospital in Wichita. Since the Health Fund’s founding, grants totaling more than $41 million have supported hundreds of health-related projects in Kansas.

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