Siloam Newsletter September 2022

Moments We Are Made For

Moments We Are Made For

As I reflect back this year on three decades of ministry at Siloam Health, I am grateful for the literally thousands of healing encounters that God has orchestrated—touching body, mind, and spirit. Thank you for being a vital source of support for those acts of service for our neighbors in need.

When our health care ministry started, we could not have imagined how many different nations those neighbors would come from! From the Vietnamese, Kurds and Somalis to the Lost Boys of Sudan and the newly arriving Afghan Allies, the Lord has consistently positioned Siloam to be a place where our neighbors from all nations can seek excellent, compassionate, and culturally relevant health care in Christ’s name.

Those exchanges have been gifts to us as well. Our patients inspire us with their stories, deepen our own awareness of injustice, and open our eyes to the diverse gifts of our New American neighbors. We are indebted to community members who have stepped up along the way to be our culture brokers and teachers, many joining Siloam as volunteers, staff, and even board members. Such partnerships are a major way we live out our core value to “create sanctuary” at Siloam, helping the culturally marginalized to overcome practical and structural barriers to health care.

Even now as we find ourselves preparing to welcome Ukranian refugees while continuing to care for newly arrived Afghan Allies, Siloam will continue to welcome the weary. It is through this network of team members all pulling in the same

direction that we can respond meaningfully to the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of our new neighbors. In the next few pages, we’ll detail some of the moments when we were called to serve some particularly vulnerable groups just as they were making Middle Tennessee their home. What an incredible testament to the goodness of God and the outpouring of love from our community that our medically vulnerable neighbors from around the world find hope and healing in the waters of Siloam!

In Christ’s love,

Morgan Willis, MD President & CEO

WELCOMING THE VIETNAMESE

In the early 1990s, as a recently-opened clinic, Siloam had set out to care for low-income and uninsured residents of Nashville’s Edgehill community when a fateful encounter with a Vietnamese refugee would forever change the course of our journey.

Seeking care at Siloam because he had nowhere else to go, the man - even with the cultural and language barriers –was able to receive respectful and culturally appropriate care. The positive experience would be one he shared with his community, encouraging many refugees from Vietnam to seek us out. Morgan shares “one of our earliest regular volunteer interpreters was Phuong Le, and she was a very helpful advocate. Then we brought on as a member of the board a local Vietnamese pastor, Pastor Ha.” Our earliest patients became our teachers in how to care for people well, forever changing the fabric of Siloam Health.

Starting with one Vietnamese refugee patient in the early 1990s, Siloam quickly became a trusted organization among numerous immigrant communities and has been entrusted to oversee Tennessee’s Refugee Medical Screening program for almost two decades.

LOST BOYS OF SUDAN

Refugees from Sudan fled to Ethiopia and Kenya during the Sudanese civil war in the mid to late 1990s. Many of those who resettled in Nashville received care at Siloam, sharing unimaginable trauma with our providers as they explained the horrors of their journey to America.

To bridge the gap in care many of these refugees were experiencing as new Americans, the Siloam team worked alongside pharmaceutical companies to create a special program for the group that would be known as “the Lost Boys of Sudan.” The companies donated medication for the Sudanese Refugees and other communities of Lost Boys around the country. Elsewhere, community partners like St. Bartholomew’s Church helped Siloam raise money to purchase even more items the Lost Boys would need. God, working through his people, truly provided!

Our process of working with this community helped us develop new programs to address their health needs and also brought to light the need for resources to help newly arrived citizens understand the importance of preventative health, laying the groundwork for our whole-person approach to care.

Siloam Health founder Dr. David Gregory with the first Vietnamese patient and his wife.

Dr. Morgan Wills posing with his patient a Lost Boy of Sudan.

Pastor Ha, one of our first advocates and teachers for serving this unfamiliar population.

SYRIAN RESETTLEMENT

In 2011 the Syrian conflict began, and an estimated 5 million people fled across the world to find safety. Siloam Health Behavioral Health consultant Rebecca Swift was among the many staff members who served them when they first arrived at Siloam. “I think it was maybe my first experience where I saw a conflict on the news and then I saw the ramifications of it play out for a people group in front of me at the clinic.” she shares. This was a first for Rebecca, working with a group of patients that were a war-torn people, who didn’t process through refugee or resettlement camps, their trauma was fresh, painful, and overwhelming. However, Siloam was uniquely prepared to support them through Rebecca and other staff who worked to provide physical, spiritual, and emotional care. “I think we come at the person from a desire to affirm their words, their dignity, and their value and that makes them feel safe and comfortable to share things that they wouldn't necessarily share or express emotions that they wouldn't necessarily express.”

AFGHAN ALLIES

In 2021 the Taliban came back into power in Afghanistan making it unsafe for US allies to remain in their home country. Thousands fled for fear of retaliation and violence against them and their families. In the last six months we have cared for these refugees through refugee medical screenings, ongoing medical encounters, and our Nashville Neighbors program.

Nashville Neighbors pairs a group of established Nashvillians with a refugee family being resettled in Middle Tennessee. Together they work to expand the refugee's family’s knowledge of health and navigating the American health care system while building community. Zainab Al-Fatlawi, Siloam Health’s Nashville Neighbors program manager, shares how this experience adds value to both the volunteers and the participants, “our groups are so much more than lessons they care about one another, and our teams go above and beyond to build trust and make their new neighbors feel welcome.” This program gives volunteers the opportunity to be part of the sanctuary Siloam seeks to provide to everyone we encounter, expanding our mission to share the love of Christ outside of our physical locations.

Syrian mother comforting her child during a Refugee Medical Screening.

A Nashville Neighbors team serving a newly arrived Afghan family.

Coming Full Circle

For over 30 years supporters like you have made thousands of clinic and refugee screenings possible in and through Siloam Health. Beyond the physical, we have also provided spiritual and emotional care to immigrants and refugees from around the globe who have made a home in Tennessee after the life-changing journey of resettlement. Even some of our staff members like the Director of Patient Relations Kap Sum (from Burma) and senior community health worker Berenice Oliva (from Mexico) first walked through our doors as patients, believing that they had no one in this unfamiliar new home. That is, until they found sanctuary at Siloam.

“We found a place where people would take care of us,” Berenice says reflecting on her first encounter at Siloam. Her positive experience with the multicultural staff and volunteer interpreters, which included a social worker, encouraged her to pursue social work as a career – later becoming the first person in her family to graduate from college. She would go on to join the Siloam team as a community health worker, helping to give other new Americans the same warm welcome she received. “I think it’s the best thing because if my mom hadn’t gotten that support, she wouldn’t have been able to support and help me accomplish everything I have,” Berenice said.

Kap Sum, who works to ensure a positive patient experience by leading the patient relations team, shared a similar memory. “When I first came to Siloam, I remember seeing the relief my family felt at having people in this foreign place praying for us! The staff wanted to understand us, and we felt that,” he said.

The encounter helped shape how Kap Sum delivers a quality experience to our current patients. “Because my entire team were born in other countries, we are uniquely qualified to understand what people who come into the clinic face in their lives.”

That understanding is part of how Siloam Health provides care to ensure our culturally marginalized patients feel valued. “Health care is only a part of how we make our patients feel seen and heard,” Kap Sum revealed. “By opening Siloam Health Antioch as a walk-in clinic, we respect their time and reduce barriers to care for patients whose schedules make setting appointments difficult. We always want to adapt to meet the patients needs.”

Kap Sum

Berenice

SILOAM HEALTH'S 30TH ANNIVERSARY VIDEO SERIES

To experience the stories and celebrate Siloam's legacy visit SiloamHealth.ORG/30 or scan the QR code to watch.

JOHN WAHBA, NP

A volunteer since 2011, John Wahba felt called to serve in a different capacity after seeing the life changing work at Siloam Health. Scan the QR code to hear about how Siloam inspired him to go back to school and become a Family Nurse Practitioner.

CAMILLA AND HEBER ROSALES

Camilla's son Heber was born with a cleft lip and cleft palate They later learned he needed specialty care for intellectual disabilities Camilla brought him to Siloam where she describes how she felt the love of God from Siloam's staff Scan the QR code to hear about how Siloam was there when she had no one

DR. ALAN GRABER

After hearing about Siloam from his colleagues at Vanderbilt, Dr. Graber had to see it for himself. He says he's never encountered anything in medicine like he did at Siloam. Scan the QR code to hear about his experience witnessing people living out their faith through volunteering.