Our History
Since 1999, the GoodNEWS program has been combining the perspectives and approaches of faith-based organizations and health organizations, in order to improve healthful living practices and health outcomes in the community setting. The program trains Lay Health Promoters (LHPs) in how to enhance their own lives and the lives of others in their congregations and communities, by embracing healthful living practices in six different areas: spiritual health, mental health, intellectual health, social health, physical health and environmental health. The program’s success is due to the efforts of many collaborators, including SouthFair Community Development Corporation, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Methodist Hospital System, SouthFair Weed and Seed Faith-Based Coalition, and the United Methodist Church. As of 2008, GoodNEWS had trained almost 150 LHPs from more than eighty (80) congregations.
The GoodNEWS program in Dallas, Texas has been especially effective. In 2004, twenty-two (22) LHPs from twelve (12) partnering congregations in South Dallas enrolled in the program, and the first class of GoodNEWS LHPs graduated on March 28, 2005. These original 12 partnering congregations have increasingly become a health resource for the community, by sponsoring community health and wellness programs, the South Dallas Wellness Walkers program, distributing a highly-acclaimed health newsletter (The Church Health Connection), completing the American Heart Association (AHA) Fit for Life Program, sponsoring community-wide Pink Ribbon Breakfast and Go Red Sunday events, and offering health education and screening at Kwanzaa Healthfests and other health programs in the community.
In 2007, the GoodNEWS program was awarded a five-year grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, for training a special group of twenty (20) additional African – American congregations as an extension of the South Dallas program. During the next five (5) years our community-based participatory research collaboration will determine whether those who enroll in the GoodNEWS program can reduce their risk factors for cardiovascular disease. We hope the GoodNEWS approach and program will become a model for other communities seeking to prevent the level of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, heart disease and stroke among their residents.
We invite you and your congregation to become a part of the next chapter in the GoodNEWS history!
Click here to read more about the current GoodNEWS Trial.