Granger Westberg Leadership in Faith Community Nursing Award

Established in 2011 (first award was given at the National Meeting June 2012), this award recognizes an outstanding Faith Community Nurse who exemplifies faith community nursing and has achieved success in implementing a practice that is faith centered, community driven and wholistic in its approach toward health promotion, disease prevention and spiritually integrated.

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Awards Criteria

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  • Demonstrates outstanding evidence-based practice in Faith Community Nursing.
  • Implements change and achieves significant improvement using creative approaches to advance the professional practice of Faith Community Nursing.
  • Advocates for the development and effective use of the nursing process of faith community nursing as delineated within ANA/HMA approved Scope and Standards.
  • Demonstrates professional competency and compassion when advocating for whole-person health care for individual and congregate members of a faith community.
  • Demonstrates leadership as an HMA Member in good standing.
  • Membership in the American Nurses Association, preferred, but not required.
  • Demonstrates outstanding professional standards through participative on-going education.

Past Recipients

Sue Cox, BSN,RN-BC – 2021 Granger Westberg Leadership in Faith Community Nursing Award

Sue Cox has been in Faith Community Nursing (FCN) since 1995 when two health care systems merged to become one called Advocate Health Care. She has been a FCN for over 30 years. Sue has been a pioneer in the FCN movement and after initially serving two churches in the Lakeview area of Chicago until 2000 has continued a practice at Lakeview Presbyterian Church. She has excelled in her decades-long practice as an FCN. She is a purist whose primary concern, whether serving her congregation, or in modeling the role is always the intentional care of the spirit.

Starting in 2019, she has become a part-time Manager for the Advocate Aurora FCN Network Nurses. While working part-time as an FCN, Sue has also worked continually worked as a staff nurse in Ambulatory Surgery, Oncology and Medical-Surgical nursing. Most recently during the current pandemic, she also worked several months as staff nurse on a Covid-19 Care unit.

Her continued clinical involvement in the hospital has kept her skills fresh and allowed her to build successful health care liaisons that help her excel in counseling and referring her church members to health practitioners. Sue has been recognized as a nurse of excellence through her ANCC certification in Ambulatory Care Nursing and her induction into Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.

She is an active member of Health Ministries Association. For these reasons Sue is a deserving nominee for this award.

 


Kathy Bryant, BSN, RN-BC – 2019 Granger Westberg Leadership in Faith Community Nursing Award

Kathy Bryant has been a Health Ministries Educator since 2008 with Norton Healthcare’s Faith and Health Ministries program in Louisville, KY. Kathy has been a member of Health Ministries Association since 2012. She is a Faith Community Nurse Mentor, FCN Society member and experienced FCN Leader. She has been referred to mentor several regional novice FCN’s by HMA Board members, and many regional HMA members have contacted her for guidance and advice.

In 2017, Kathy was among the earliest to become a Certified Faith Community Nurse through HMA and ANCC. Kathy’s health ministry team chose to develop an annual whole person health and wellness clinic for the community. What started with a small vision and no budget blossomed into a full-facility clinic where 300 individuals received medical exams, flu shots, hearing/vision screenings, advance directive legal advice, haircuts, and other services. The model planted seeds at other churches to develop their own health ministry, some even replicating efforts for annual health clinics. One of the churches implemented a mobile medical ministry with Kathy’s input.

Kathy serves as Chairperson of the Good Samarian Foundation Committee of the United Methodist Church (KY) and is a Board of Director Member of Grace Kids: A Church for Children. She has been a leader in many mission trips since 2001, both in the United States and in Ghana, Costa Rica, Belize, and Honduras. Kathy is pursuing a master’s degree in Public Health at the University of Louisville.

 


Marilyn D. Harris, MSN, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN – 2018 Granger Westberg Leadership in Faith Community Nursing Award.

Marilyn Harris has been a nursing leader in Pennsylvania for over 50 years.

Ms. Harris became the Administrative Director of the Community Interfaith Parish Nurse Program at Abington Memorial Hospital in 1995. She coordinated the education and support of nurses and health ministers in multiple faith communities. In 1992, Marilyn was awarded the Pennsylvania State Nurses’ Association Mary Ann Arty Legislative Award for her work with PSNA and legislators to pass a bill that approved death pronouncement by RNs in Pennsylvania.

Following retirement from Abington Hospital in 1999, she became the Faith Community Nurse at Hatboro Baptist Church in Hatboro, Pennsylvania. In that capacity she still makes hospital, home and nursing home visits to members and coordinates various health classes and volunteers within the church. She is currently leading a Living History project in which church members can tell their stories.  As part of a multi-church team, she is working to settle a refuge family.

Marilyn is on a regional FCN Advisory Planning Council that hosts quarterly programs and an annual one-day conference for the past 21 years.  Marilyn served on the HMA Board and the 2003 HMA Valley Forge Conference Planning Committee.  In 2008 and 2014 she chaired the ANA Home Health Nursing Scope and Standards of Practice Task Force.  In 2011, the National Ministries Board for the American Baptist Church, presented her with the Faithful, Effective Leadership in Christian Education Award.

Ms. Harris has published extensively about home health and health ministry. Marilyn has written a meditation book Journeys with God and published over 173 nursing articles in numerous journals, including six editions of the Handbook of Home Health Care Administration. She is the winner of two American Journal of Nursing, Excellence in Writing Awards.  Her article Power in the Blood: Local Lifesaving Partnerships Between Churches and the American Red Cross, was published in the April-June 2018 edition of the Journal of Christian Nursing.

In addition to the 2018 Granger Westberg Leadership in Faith Community Nursing Award, she most recently received the 2018 American Nurses Association Distinguished Membership Award.

Previous Recipients

  • 2017, Maureen Flak, BSN, RN, Greensboro, NC
  • 2016, Deborah Stankiewicz, MS, RN-BC, HTCP, Faith Community Nurse, Western Springs, IL
  • 2015, Lyn McIntryre, RN, Faith Community Nurse, 2015 National Conference, New Orleans, LA
  • 2014, Cynthia E. Carroll, RN, Faith Community Nurse, 2014 National Conference, Hyattsville, MD
  • 2012, Mary Ann Stone, RN, BAA, CLM, Faith Community Nurse, 2012 National Conference, Nashville, TN