Health Calls Season 6, Episode 13 explores how interfaith engagement strengthens whole‑person care and human flourishing across the United States. Host Brian Reardon and Executive Producer Josh Matejka welcome Suzanne Watts Henderson, PhD, Senior Director of Faith & Health at Interfaith America to discuss religious diversity as a civic asset and a practical lever for community trust in health care.
Health Calls Season 6, Episode 13 explores how interfaith engagement strengthens whole‑person care and human flourishing across the United States. Host Brian Reardon and Executive Producer Josh Matejka welcome Suzanne Watts Henderson, PhD, Senior Director of Faith & Health at Interfaith America to discuss religious diversity as a civic asset and a practical lever for community trust in health care.
The conversation traces Interfaith America’s move from higher‑ed leadership development into health care settings, accelerated during the pandemic as faith leaders partnered with clinicians to bridge trust and boost vaccine confidence—including stories from Charlotte and other local communities. Henderson unpacks a simple framework—respect, relate, cooperate—for Catholic and non‑Catholic partners to deliver spiritual care that honors human dignity for everyone, not only Catholics.
Resources
Read Suzanne Watts Henderson and Eboo Patel's 2024 article in Health Progress
Brian Reardon (00:06):
Welcome to Health Calls, the podcast of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. I'm your host, Brian Reardon, and with me is Josh Matejka. Hey, Josh.
Josh Matejka (00:14):
Hey, Brian.
Brian Reardon (00:15):
Josh, on this episode, again, we're talking this season about United for Change. And for this episode, we're going to talk about different faiths, same goal, how interfaith engagement elevates human flourishing. And of course, human flourishing is a component of the Catholic Health Association's mission or vision statement, I should say. And part of what we do in Catholic health care really is to elevate human flourishing. So as we've talked about this theme of United for Change throughout this season, it's important that we recognize, and again, in a lot of the conversations we've had, we've talked about different collaborations with other Catholic health care partners and entities, but really it's important to look beyond our faith tradition as we look to truly be united for change in elevating human flourishing.
Josh Matejka (01:02):
Yeah, that's exactly right, Brian.This is something that, and I'll get to how we started to consider Interfaith America in a second, but this is something I've been thinking a lot about. Since a few years ago, we filmed an episode of our Inside Out ministry formation podcast and spiritual formation podcast with our colleague, Darren Henson. And Dr. Mohamad Fakih was on the show. And as a Muslim doctor, he talked about the power of integrating his faith with Catholic values in a Catholic health system. And that was really powerful for me to sit through as a producer and as an editor because I feel like I learned a lot about how he brought himself to the role and what his patients and what his colleagues were getting from getting to learn about him, but also getting to learn about Catholic values and Catholic social teaching within that and how all of these different faith traditions enabled more human flourishing within the process of caregiving.
(02:01):
And so I've been thinking a lot about that over the last few years. And then back in 2024, our guest Suzanne and Dr. Eboo Patel co-authored an article for Health Progress that really laid out the benefits of interfaith engagement and how their organization enables that within Catholic health systems and beyond. And so I'm really excited for us to be able to talk with Suzanne today and get a deeper look at how Interfaith America is engaging in the health care space because I think that's so important to elevate whole person care especially and how spiritual care is such an integral part of that.
Brian Reardon (02:42):
Yeah. Thanks for that context, Josh. Well, let's go ahead and bring in Suzanne Watts Henderson. She is Senior Director of Faith and Health for Interfaith America. Suzanne, welcome to the show.
Suzanne Watts Henderson (02:53):
Oh, it's a privilege to be with you two today. Thanks for inviting me.
Brian Reardon (02:57):
Yeah. So I think a great place to start would be for, if you could, tell us a little bit about what is Interfaith America.
Suzanne Watts Henderson (03:05):
Great place to start. Interfaith America is a national nonprofit based in Chicago, but with a portfolio of engagements across the country. We're more than two decades old and have always been based on the premise that our nation's religious diversity is a civic asset. That is to say we have lots of great work to do in unlocking the positive potential by engaging across religious and worldview difference to strengthen the common good. So we began mostly in higher ed, working with students who would be the future civic leaders in all contexts and have evolved, still continuing our higher ed work, but have evolved beyond that to engage workplace settings of various types and civic spaces of various types. And health care is just one of those.
Brian Reardon (04:00):
Yeah. Before we get into the health care thing, I think something you just said might need a little bit more deeper discussion. And that is you described it as a civic asset. This notion of America, again, we've heard a lot about religion in American life and civic life. And of course, those of us who paid attention in grade school and learned about the separation of church and state, it's unique to America, right? That we are not a nation that's built on one particular religion. You hear a lot of people say, "Well, we're a Judeo-Christian nation," but really that was not what the forefathers intended. They really wanted to have that sort of separation, but separation of church and state doesn't necessarily mean they can't coexist or that they should not coexist. And so can you talk a little bit more about religion and faith as being a civic asset?
Suzanne Watts Henderson (04:51):
That's exactly right, Brian. Our founder and president often says that maybe our founding fathers got some things not quite right, but they were right on the religious pluralism point in that, and the point of separation being that there is not one mandated worldview or tradition that takes priority over the others, and that even from our earliest days, presidents were welcoming people of different faith traditions into the White House and really bridging the difference even within Christian traditions, right? To say, "We are better when we bring our distinct identities together to address in the founding of the country, the question of how are we going to form a civil society that we all want to participate in?
Brian Reardon (05:41):
Yeah. And switching to kind of the topic at hand, and that is the importance of sort of interfaith dialogue and awareness of the religious beliefs of others in health care. And I guess for your organization, Interfaith America, how do you get into this space of health care? Or maybe you could start by, what were some of the things that prompted you to start working in the health care space?
Suzanne Watts Henderson (06:05):
Yes. I would say this is a fairly new space for us. We've been in it for about five years, and it grew out of two things. One was the increasing recognition from our higher ed partners who are teaching in the health sciences that the value of helping their students gain skills and understanding around religious diversity was particularly high. These nursing professors, these folks in pre-medical education understood that clinical settings call for, yes, a cultural competency, but a cultural competency that takes religion and spirituality very seriously because when it comes to your body and navigating the stages through the life journey, religion and spirituality speaks so deeply into decisions made at every point along the way. So it was really our faculty member and even academic leaders who were saying, "We need more of this interfaith competency in our health sciences." Then along comes the pandemic and we discover alongside everybody else in our society that there was a lot of broken trust when it came to what folks might think of as conventional health institutions, both health care systems and public health organizations.
(07:22):
The trust we discovered really lies more in faith communities and faith leaders. And so as an organization, Interfaith America were very nimble and we were able to mobilize the hundreds of campus partners that we had to train student ambassadors to work alongside the trusted organizations, faith communities, faith-based organizations, to bridge gaps in information and access, particularly when it came to the vaccine.
Brian Reardon (07:51):
We'll go back to the comment about trust because I think this is one that's important to realize is that trust in institutions we've seen has eroded. It was eroding or being eroded before COVID, but COVID had maybe accelerated that. And what you just described, and again, in that higher education situation, is sort of taking a trusted person like a physician and nurses we know continually score very high on the trust factor, hospitals and health systems less so, but is there a value or maybe a forced multiplier in combining a faith leader who can speak alongside of a physician or a hospital executive in trying to get people to trust, for example, a vaccine?
Suzanne Watts Henderson (08:36):
Exactly. And we saw this. We saw faith leaders step forward alongside medical practitioners and clinicians and speak to the value of the vaccine and speak often out of their theological or kind of ideological commitments to the common good. So I remember for one of our projects, we interviewed a pulmonologist in Charlotte who is a member of the sick community. So he was interviewed in his turban and he could speak to the deep values in Sikh tradition about caring for one another. And he spoke both as a pulmonologist and as a person of his own very particular faith in ways that I think others from other traditions were able to connect with.
Brian Reardon (09:27):
Interesting. And as you look at the role of faith, and of course in Catholic health care, obviously it's in our DNA, right? The fact that we are Catholic and a lot of people think, "Oh, well, Catholic health care is there for Catholics and we have to remind people, no, we're here for everybody." And I think what I've really learned over the last couple of decades of serving in Catholic health care is that sort of truly Catholic approach, that universal approach to providing care. And I think it's important to recognize that human dignity is really at the ... That's the common denominator at the forefront. And if we're not recognizing a person's religious belief or maybe glossing over it or not being attentive to it, in some ways that affects our ability to uphold their human dignity.
Suzanne Watts Henderson (10:17):
Yeah. To me, Catholic health care is situated perfectly for the work of religious pluralism and health care. Why
Brian Reardon (10:24):
Do you say that?
Suzanne Watts Henderson (10:26):
We think about three verbs. We think about respect, relate, and cooperate. And I'll say just a little bit more about each of those and why Catholic health care is just spot on in terms of the distinctives of your tradition. So respect begins just at the place you described, Brian. It begins with a valuing of all people as in our, I'm also Christian, so in the Christian tradition as made in the image of God. So that is the starting point, is the dignity of all people that helps keep us from thinking of the folks in the hospital bed as patients and thinking of them instead as humans, right? And so that respect is the vital starting place, but it's a respect that goes beyond we're just going to accept our differences and keep our distance. It goes toward relationship. Relationship in our approach to pluralism is vital because we know that when we stay in our silos, either metaphorically or sometimes geographically, we don't understand one another beyond the stereotypes that our brains rush to create or accept.
(11:47):
And so it's in relationship, it's an actual meaningful, authentic engagement across difference that we begin to both learn more about our own traditions and commitments and begin to accept others on their terms. And then we move toward cooperate. And health, again, it's easy to identify the common good. We speak a lot at Interfaith America about cooperating for the common good and health. It's easy to see what that is. It is human flourishing. So we cooperate toward the common good, recognizing that clinician, patient, family, health system, all bring perspectives that are important and have something to offer in the journey toward human flourishing and that it's impossible actually to get to the health outcomes we're seeking if we don't engage patients on their own terms and at that deepest level.
Brian Reardon (12:46):
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, it's not the caregiver, it's not a one-way proposition, right? It's not, "Oh, I'm going to provide care and you're going to get better." It is that interchange, you need the cooperation, you need the buy-in, if you will, of the patient, of their family members, of those that are accompanying them to really bring about healing in a successful way. So on the relationship piece, as you're working with health care providers, and I think one example that I go way, way back in my career in Catholic health care that I thought was an interesting approach at the time, and now I look back and I'm like, "Well, yeah, of course we should have been doing that, " was I had a pastoral care director at the first hospital I worked at and I was in public relations and she said, "Brian, let's do a story in the local media about some volunteers who are Muslim who were sowing gowns for Muslim patients because obviously the hospital gowns that we've all been in don't cover a whole lot." And so these were, again, appropriate garments for those of Muslim faith to wear when they're in the hospital and it made for a great store.
(13:50):
And I was like, "Wow, that's really a Catholic hospital doing that. " But again, as the pastoral care reminded me, that was part of who we are as Catholic. And so that's an example of recognizing a person's religious values or tradition. And I don't even want to say accommodating, but being responsive to that and relating to that person so that they feel when they're in your facility, that their faith is being honored. So are those the type of examples or the type of work you work with in Interfaith America with health care providers?
Suzanne Watts Henderson (14:23):
Absolutely. And we could take up all of our time with one specific example after another. One that comes to mind for me is the case of a man who was dying of prostate cancer and he was in a state of great distress. He was agitated. His nurse noticed she had had, interestingly, in her undergrad setting had had some interfaith engagement training, and so she had something of a radar screen for what might be going on with this man. And she just asked him, she said, "Can I help you in any way?" And he said, "Well, in my tradition, I'm really ready to die. I'm ready to move on, but in my tradition, it's really essential that we have a smudging ceremony to mark this transition. And I don't want to go home to die because I don't have any support there. And here I am in a hospital and I can't figure out how I'm going to be able to address this spiritual need." Well, this nurse got busy and started collaborating with, not just with the care team, but with the fire people in the hospital and the pastoral care team was able to connect her with a shaman in the community who could come in and they actually held a smudging ceremony in a hospital, if you can believe that, in a way that brought the man peace.
(15:51):
And I think one point that I would also like to underscore is it wasn't just the men who benefited from this. It was the whole team coming around this beautiful, sacred moment of transition and bringing the resources that they had at their disposal to address this very human need. So they felt more human in their work. We hear so much about health worker burnout and understandably so the stresses and demands of health systems and the transactional way in which so much health care has been framed, we find that in story after story, helping people feel confident to engage the humanity of patients also benefits them and therefore benefits the health system itself.
Brian Reardon (16:43):
No, that's great. And it reminds me of a comment you made when we talked earlier in getting ready for the podcast, you said religion is a bridge, not a wedge. And I think that story you just shared is a perfect example of that. So on that theme of religion as a wedge, or religion is a bridge, not a wedge, is that something that I think people need to think differently about? Because again, in this sort of polarized world we're living in, we do tend to silo people. As you said, there's sort of stereotypes, there's ways we just assume somebody because of their religious belief is in this particular bucket. How does Interfaith America address that sort of siloed approach to viewing people differently because of their faith beliefs?
Suzanne Watts Henderson (17:27):
We like to say that we're a little bit of a nerdy organization. So we really draw on social science research here and as is often the case, social science research kind of confirms what we know and experience. In this case, it's about bridging social capital and bridging from one clearly identified affinity group, in this case, a faith community to another. So what the research says is that as we build the walls around our own identities and traditions and communities, we tend to ... Our bias and our prejudice and our stereotypes are enhanced. It is when we bridge out of those very secure identities and secure traditions that not only can we work together toward the common good, in this case, human flourishing, but we also become more, if I can say this, more mature as spiritual beings in our own tradition. And I think that's the thing that people sometimes misunderstand about pluralism.
(18:37):
I've encountered this more than once, this notion that, well, I like the idea of interfaith engagement, but it feels like I have to check my own faith at the door and actually the opposite. The opposite is true. And I came from a higher ed setting myself and I saw it with my students over and over and over again. Again, the research bears it out. The more we engage across difference, the more deeply we consider and frankly commit to our own values, our own worldview, our own tradition. So my friendships with Muslims have made me, I would say, a better and more thoughtful Christian.
Brian Reardon (19:16):
Yeah, makes sense. And I love the fact that you mentioned research because one of the things that I think often gets overlooked by critics of health systems that have a religious foundation is, oh, religion has no place in medicine, religion and science should be separated. Well, actually a lot of research out there that tending to patient's spiritual needs, again, increase or enhance health outcomes. And so recognizing that and recognizing the fact that we have all different faiths in America, I think the work you're doing is so important to bridge that. And so before I bring Josh back into the conversation, we begin to wrap up. Can you share a little bit for those and a lot of our listeners work in Catholic health care, what is one or two things they should think about as they're engaging or want to maybe learn how to better engage with people who have different faiths on their own?
Suzanne Watts Henderson (20:08):
A couple of things. First, you've already referred to the role that some pastoral care folks have played in your journey on this topic. And I think probably most Catholic health systems have some kind of pastoral care or spiritual care department. Those folks are typically a great resource. I would also say it's the tendency in the medical world, I've learned this, to really kind of cut things up and allocate towards specialty. So, "Oh, well, this isn't my department, that's for the spiritual care people. " I think the most effective engagement that I've seen comes when the spiritual care folks come alongside clinicians or come alongside even administrators and help them understand and build some skills around engaging religious diversity. And you're not going to become, if you're a pulmonologist, you're not going to become a spiritual care expert and that's not the point, but it is vitally important.
(21:08):
And I use that word on purpose. It's vitally important that you understand how to have that conversation and how, if there are critical needs to refer out to the specialist, but there's a sort of generalist competency that I would love to see and am seeing more and more health systems begin to promote.
Brian Reardon (21:28):
Great. Again, that was Suzanne Watts Henderson. She's senior director of Faith and Health with Interfaith America. It was great to have her on the show. Again, this has been another episode of Health Calls, the podcast of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. I'm your host, Brian Reardon. Our executive producer is Josh Matejka. Our scheduling coordinator is Sarah Marchant. Health Calls is produced and engineered at Once Films here in St. Louis, Missouri. You can access all of the Health Calls episodes at the CHA website, which is chausa.org. The Health Progress article I mentioned will also be featured alongside the audio file on that webpage. We encourage you to read that article from a couple of years ago. You can also access health calls on all of your favorite podcast streaming services, such as Spotify or Apple. And when you do so, please give us a rating.
(22:19):
We'd love to hear from you, get your feedback. And as always, thanks for listening.