I attended a presentation entitled Reaching “Hard to Reach” Communities: Working with Immigrant Religious Institutions on Wednesday April 28th. The question that the presenter sought to address was: How do we look at religious institutions in service planning/ policy making?

According to the presenter, religious institutions reach deeply into immigrant communities, show compassion, and care for community’s well being, however they are grossly under utilized.

The focus of the talk was primarily on the Chinese immigrant community in New York City, therefore the study covered Christian and Buddhist religious institutions. The approach taken was using HIV and AIDS as a lens of understanding core issues focused on Chinese immigrant religious organizations.

The presenter’s study design was as follows:
– Census and telepohone survey of Chinese religious institutions.
– Walk through neighborhoods heavily populated by Chinese.
His results were: 200 organizations, Buddhist accounted for 29%, Christian accounted for 60.5% and the remaining 10.5% was other (Daoist/ Taoist institutions).
The presenter conducted 94 surveys to obtain data on the percentage of these organizations that were involved in health related issues (i.e. providing blood pressure tests, health screenings, informational pamphlets). His conclusion was that Christian organizations participated more heavily in health related issues. He also asked the question of whether or not all these institutions believed that HIV/ AIDS discussions should be an aspect of their health discussions. Around 80% of all institutions said there should be involvement but only 11% of Buddhist and 30% of Christian organizations were actually doing it. He speculated on why there was such minimal participation and arrived at the following hypothesis: Discussion of HIV
– raises questions of gender inequality
– is connected to homosexuality and thus gives homosexuality a negative connotation. Some quotations he gathered were: “homosexuality is not favored by god…shameful” – Christian; “not natural” – Buddhist.
– raises questions of socioeconomic diversity
– it high lights racial stigmas : church going people have a harsh few on non-traditional Chinese and fear their safety at church with blacks and Hispanics around

The presenter concludes by stating that religious organizations can serve as a liaison between people and the community therefore a partnerships between policy makers and religious institutions may better ensure that the needs of the community are met.