Health Interventions
My enhanced website content adds unique value to solve problems and improve the health of parishes.
Improving Spiritual, Mental, and Organizational Health
My motivation for making websites for Catholic parishes goes beyond merely improving their online presence. I want to address the problem of secular society’s dehumanizing expectations of how we think and live, which are the primary environmental cause of many mental health problems today. As we know, many young people who are exploring religion today find healthy alternatives. We are at the beginning of an exciting movement—with much room for creative interventions to accelerate and solidify this new-found faith.
I aim to help parish leadership by including in parish websites a kind of soft social science intervention, which is primarily educational. They are designed into the enhanced content: the blog posts and quizzes. These interventions function on multiple levels in order to improve the spiritual and mental health of parishioners and the health of local parish organizations. My content enriches and deepens your parish culture with intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and spiritual formation, which, in turn, alleviates pain and suffering caused by secular modernity. In this sense, my web design services include consulting and small educational programs that integrate science and religion. These can be thought of as built-in organizational development and health behavior change interventions. Every website has the option to include these interventions.
A Framework for Web Design
I use a conceptual framework for guiding the selection of topics and points to make with my educational content. My framework is my own proprietary adaptation of a popular social science model and systems thinking that I used during my 25 years doing public health and medical research.
The Socio-ecological Model (SEM) understands influenced by complex interactions between a person and his environment. A person’s health is caused by factors that include and go beyond a person’s choices and everyday life—factors that affect larger groups and even everyone in society. The environment exists on several levels, such as the family, community, organization, and government policy level. Health researchers, practitioners, and their partners in education, transportation, and other social sectors use the model to guide cost-effective, multi-pronged interventions on these environmental factors that are intended to ultimately change individual behavior. The SEM has been used most effectively to change diet and physical activity behaviors.
I adapted the model to the problems caused by our secular social environment and their potential solutions which are under the control of parishes. Schedule a consultation to learn more about my model.
Multi-Disciplinary Theology
To apply my version of the SEM to mental health via Catholic parishes, I practice my own unique brand of multi-disciplinary theology. I was already a generalist, lifelong learner, engineer, health scientist, and statistician. Then, in mid-career, I added to that technical background by spending 12 years imbibing the “life of the mind” offered by the University of Chicago and its Divinity School. I was a “contemplative with a day job” and an Independent Scholar.
Today my theological “brand” includes Cardinal Ratzinger’s emphasis for theologians on deepening the understanding of mystery, Scripture, and tradition—along with creatively integrating my other skills, experience, and interests.
Topics for Educational Content
My framework guides the selection of topics for educational content in blog posts and quizzes. They include theology, philosophy, societal norms and values, and the Roman Catholic Church—all factors which impose expectations of life upon all of us. Since they have such a profound effect, I believe that it is absolutely worthwhile to work towards increasing the lay knowledge of these themes. My educational content is intended to serve as the starting point for further discussions in homilies, coffee hours, and education ministries.
Your parish culture and the interests of parishioners are the other half of the criteria for selecting themes. For any parish, the topic of the blog post are negotiable, always on the agenda for website design meetings.
The quizzes cover a wide variety of individual topics on these themes, a different one each week. The list below includes a small selection of available topics.
