“Jesus said the poor will always be with you. So far he’s been right,” Scott Morris, CEO and founder of the Church Health Center.
Thus, despite the impressive strides the Center has made during more than a quarter-century of service, and the thousands of lives it has touched, Morris is far from complacent. Asked if he has successfully executed the plan he brought to Memphis 28 years ago, he is quick to reply that he’s “nowhere close! We’ve made progress; we’ve gotten started.”
A graduate of the University of Virginia, with a Master of Divinity degree from Yale and a medical degree from Emory University, Morris is a board-certified family practice physician and also an ordained minister. He sees patients four days a week at the Center and also serves as associate pastor at St. John’s United Methodist Church. In 1986, the native of Atlanta brought to Memphis the dream of providing healthcare for the working uninsured, and promoting healthy bodies and spirits.
But that “start” has transformed the Memphis-based Center into an international organization that inspires, heals and educates thousands. The scope of its outreach and global impact are a surprise to many, Morris said.
“The Church Health Center is not just a little clinic on the corner of Peabody and Bellevue anymore. Most people don’t know that along with our clinic and our wellness center that provide direct patient services, the Church Health Center publishes a magazine called the Church Health Reader, we run Perea Preschool, and we are also the home of the International Parish Nurse Resource Center (IPNRC), which has trained over 15,000 nurses worldwide to work in churches and communities of faith. They look to us for their training and resources to do their work; 148 nursing schools worldwide use the curriculum that we designed and control.”
Although the IPNRC began in Chicago 30 years ago, its roots are now firmly at the Center. “People look to Memphis for their marching orders on how to work with and prepare parish nurses,” he said.
In addition to the 60,000 people in Shelby County whom the Center cares for, it promotes the exchange of ideas and shares models of faith community nursing through events such as the Westberg Symposium, which the Center hosted here in April. Guests from Canada, Europe, the Philippines, Korea, China, Ukraine and Swaziland attended the conference, Morris said.
Locally and regionally, the Center also serves a desperate need that continues to grow.
“I see over and over again women who were working 40 hours a week — and when the world fell apart in 2008, they had their hours cut back to 24 hours a week," he said. "They now have to live off less money. When they went below 30 hours a week, they lost their benefits. They still have chronic disease, hypertension, diabetes — yet they can’t afford to go to the doctor.”
A typical patient, Morris said, would be a 50-year-old woman — black, white, Hispanic, Ethiopian or Chinese — doing a job that nobody else is willing to do and supporting multiple people from two or three families with that income. “I think for many people it would be surprising to realize the number of persons that one income can sometimes support,” Morris said.
The poor will, indeed, always be with us if current projections are correct. “When we opened our doors in 1987,” Morris said, “there were 26 million uninsured Americans; they announced (in April) that if the Affordable Care Act were to be fully implemented, in 2024 there would be 30 million uninsured Americans — more than when we began!”
That’s one reason the Church Health Center's greatest physical goal now is to move into the Sears Crosstown building over the next two years — no small task, Morris acknowledged. He anticipates groundbreaking in late May and looks forward to occupying 150,000 square feet on the first three floors of the building, which boasts 1.5 million square feet and is larger than the Chrysler Building, and five times the size of the Clark Tower.
The building itself represents a $185 million project, but Morris is confident. “We’re going to turn it into the jewel of Memphis!”
Morris is also anticipating — pending accreditation in May — the opening of a family practice residence within the building, created and operated in partnership with Baptist Hospital. A July 2015 opening is planned.
The Center recently added new president Antony Sheehan, formerly a leader in Great Britain’s National Health Service and CEO of a 7,000-employee hospital system. “People have been asking me for 20 years who will be my successor,” Morris explained. “I just had my 60th birthday, and we’ve now addressed that question! Antony definitely has the experience, knowledge and talent to run a growing organization that has international roots.”
Grateful for the 27 years of support the Center has received from the Memphis Medical Society and its physicians who volunteer to help the working uninsured, Morris commented, “I am proud that my colleagues have stepped up to the plate to take care of the people who work to make our lives comfortable.”
The need is not diminishing. Noting that 52 of their sub-specialty clinics are now operated with retired doctors, Morris appeals to younger doctors in active practice to help meet that need. Volunteers can serve in several ways, and “nobody is asked to do more than they are willing to."