Our Mission

A Proven, Sustainable, and Scalable Model to Address Health Equity in the Black Community through the Black Church

  • • Adults are 30% more likely to be obese

    • 60% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes

    • Men are 30% and women 60% more likely to have high blood pressure3, with women twice as likely to have stroke

    • Women are 40% more likely to die of breast cancer

    • Twice as likely to die from COVID-19 and less likely to be vaccinated

Our Mission

Choose Healthy Life (CHL) is a non-profit organization focused on providing the Black church – the oldest and most trusted institution in the Black community - with the necessary resources, training, and support to address health disparities in hard-to-reach communities through the delivery of health services and community wellness programs.  

Our proven, sustainable, and scalable model that brings together faith and science is based on the establishment of a trained faith-based health navigator in each CHL church.

We're at the forefront of shaping the health equity field to address social determinants of health, as well as a leader on the ground in providing healthcare services and hands-on action with vulnerable communities. We aren't just discussing the path towards health equity - we're paving it.

Founded in 2021 during the height of the COVID pandemic, Choose Healthy Life funded 120 churches across 13 states. Since, we’ve conducted over 4,800 events, vaccinated and tested over 150,000 individuals, and screened over 13,000 for social determinants of health. Today, CHL's health navigators are focused on addressing the underlying health inequities in their respective communities.

“We Can’t Go Back to Normal. We Died in Normal.”

— Debra Fraser-Howze

The Health Navigator

Health Navigators are the cornerstone of the Choose Healthy Life model. These individuals, typically existing parishioners within the churches they serve, have been trained to bridge the gap between faith and science in order to address health disparities in their communities. Their unique position within the church and their status as trusted fellow parishioners allow them to effectively deliver health services and implement community wellness programs. This peer-to-peer approach makes them uniquely effective in reaching those often overlooked by traditional healthcare systems, making them crucial to our mission. By leveraging the trust and respect garnered within their congregations, our health navigators have been able to conduct thousands of events. They are not just part of the journey towards health equity - they're at the heart of it, driving us forward in our mission to improve health outcomes and address underlying health inequities in minority communities.

The Black Church