Aetna support of NCC racial and ethnic equality project
to be announced at June 14 'Circles of Names' reception
New York,
June 10, 2011 -- When three prominent women are honored here June 14 in a
National Council of Churches Circles of Names event, Aetna will announce
support of a ministry close to the hearts of the honorees: racial and ethnic
health care equity in the
United States.
Representatives from Aetna will present the NCC with a check for $25,000 to
help create tools NCC member communions can use to generate ideas and
implement action plans to promote racial and ethnic health care equality in
communities around the
U.S.
These tools will target maternal health issues.
Maternal health care in the
USA
is among the worst of the top 40 industrialized nations, even though the
U.S.
spends the most money on health care.
The
program would be implemented in three NCC program areas: the NCC Health Task
Force, the Justice for Women Working Group and the Racial Justice Program.
"The Circles of Names Campaign is a project to create a
circle of support for women's ministries by asking a thousand persons to
give $100 in the name of a woman who helped shape their faith," said the
Rev. Ann Tiemeyer, director of the NCC program for women's ministry.
"I can't think of a more appropriate setting to announce a program related
to women's health."
"We
hope the Aetna
grant will provide a strong platform to reach a broad base of our ecumenical
network in addressing the racial disparities in health care," Tiemeyer said.
"Developing an education for advocacy resource within our member communions'
context provides the sustained motivation to go beyond knowledge to advocacy
actions that can make significant change."
Miguel A. Centeno, MPA, Aetna's regional director, Northeast, Community
Relations & Urban Marketing, said
Aetna was
pleased to be working with the National Council of Churches. "Two of our
goals at Aetna
are work to help close the healthcare disparities gap and to create product
solutions that enable people to obtain insurance who might not have had it
before. Over time, it is our hope to increase the number of people
under the NCC umbrella who are insured," Centeno said.
In
addition to scores of mentoring women who will be named to the circle as a
part of the New York gathering, three special mentors will be honored:
Marge Christie, an Episcopal educator and communicator from Newark, N.J.;
Lois McCullough Dauway, a Methodist activist, leader in the UMC's Division
of Women's Ministries, and former assistant general secretary of the
National Council of Churches for justice and liberation; and Peggy L.
Shriver, a Presbyterian writer, researcher and a former assistant general
secretary of the NCC.
The
New York City Area Circles of Names Gathering will take place June 14, 2011,
from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. in The Interchurch Center, 475 Riverside Drive
in
Manhattan. The
event, one of several local events sponsored by the National Council of
Churches Circles of Names campaign, will be hosted by Anne Hale Johnson,
honorary chair of the campaign.
The gathering will be webcast live at
www.unitedmethodistwomen.org/live
from 4:45 to 5:45 p.m.
Persons planning on attending the gathering should RSVP to the Rev. Deborah
DeWinter at 212-870-2513 or
ddewinter@nccusa.org.
Since its founding in 1950, the National Council of
the Churches of Christ in the USA has been the leading force for
shared ecumenical witness among Christians in the United States. The NCC's
37 member communions -- from a wide spectrum of Protestant, Anglican,
Orthodox, Evangelical, historic African American and Living Peace
churches -- include 45 million persons in more than 100,000 local
congregations in communities across the nation.
NCC News contact:
Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2228 (office), 646-853-4212 (cell),
pjenks@ncccusa.org
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