(NewsNation) — Getting access to quality health care in Hawkinsville, Georgia — a small town of around 4,000 people located in the southern half of the state — can be burdensome.
“My parishioners sometimes drive an hour, hour and a half to see a health care provider,” said Rev. Jeffrey Lawrence, who ministers at Sandridge Baptist Church in Hawkinsville.
That’s a challenge that the University of Georgia (UGA) has spent years addressing through a partnership called “Fishers of Men.” Through the partnership, health experts at UGA have been working with rural churches like Sandridge Baptist to help educate the community about health care challenges like diabetes.
Thanks to a $1 million grant from the USDA, the latest project involves setting up telehealth equipment at the churches so residents can remotely access health care. That includes computers, large televisions and other devices like scales.
The monitors can be used for virtual appointments with physicians and to deliver educational seminars, while the scales can feed information to health care professionals.
Although that program is just in its infancy, Lawrence is heartened by the possibilities it would open to his flock and said the equipment would be a game-changer.
“[When] they can come to the church and do that virtually, that would be a major plus for them,” he said.
The partnership between UGA and the churches in Hawkinsville began several years ago when Henry Young — who works at the university’s pharmacy school — visited the community and experienced first-hand the lack of education about many health care issues.
In Hawkinsville, the standout health problem was diabetes.
“Everybody in the room either knew someone with diabetes, had family members with diabetes, they had diabetes, so I mean diabetes was touching the community all the way around. So we said hey, let’s see if we can’t come up with something to address diabetes,” Young said.
UGA helped get Hawkinsville registered with the CDC to implement a diabetes prevention program that 22 churches are now taking part in. They’ve trained 19 lifestyle coaches who work with community members to educate them about how to prevent or delay diabetes.
Deacon Gregory Brown of Christian Hope Missionary Baptist Church stressed that African American men in particular in his community often lack education about taking steps to prevent the development of serious ailments. He thinks access to this new technology could be promising.
“People really need to be educated. And this is a way to get the word out,” he said, noting that physicians could connect with a wide array of community members with the technology.
Although they have yet to use the equipment for telehealth appointments with physicians, Lawrence explained that the churches have started to use them for health care-related informational seminars and to provide virtual training for the life coaches.
But using the technology comes with its own challenges.
“My particular church is right outside of the parameter where our internet providers provide service,” he noted, adding that he’s had to rely on hotspots to connect the equipment to the web there.
Still, Lawrence is optimistic about what the telehealth equipment will achieve for his community, which is already considering partnerships with medical institutions at Atlanta-area universities like Morehouse and Emory.
“Quite frankly, we see the opportunities as being far-reaching,” he said.