Spirituality, Medicine, and Disparities in Care: A Conversation with INELDA Board Member Pastor Corey Kennard, Part One
by Lisa Feldstein
I recently spoke with Pastor Corey L. Kennard, who is the newest member of INELDA’s Board of Trustees, and also serves on INELDA’s Council on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (CEDI). In other words, when he started working with INELDA, he dove right in. This is Pastor Corey’s approach to life: when he decides to contribute his time and energy to something, he gives it his all, with the resolve to make a real difference. His website features his motto: Dum spiro spero – While I breathe, I hope.
In our conversation we covered some serious topics, including health disparities, Black patients’ mistrust of White doctors, White doctors’ disrespect of Black patients. And, of course, dying and end-of-life (EOL) care. My questions to Pastor Corey appear in bold type followed by his responses underneath.
Because of the length of Pastor Corey’s comments, we are splitting this article into two parts. This first part focuses on his history in healthcare and the discoveries he has made along the way. In the second part of the article, which will be published in next month’s issue of the newsletter, Pastor Corey will speak to how we can attract more African Americans into the doula field.
I know that you’ve always lived and worked in Detroit, MI. Many people associate Detroit with urban decline. How do you see it?
I still live in the City of Detroit. I love Detroit. It’s my home. We’ve been through a lot here, and there are a lot of negative images of our city, but that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to stay here. I believe that Detroit is better than what it’s been perceived as being. I want to be a part of that change as a positive person who has a positive impact.
You founded and serve as the pastor of Amplify Christian Church. I wonder if you can talk about the role of ministry in your life?
Everything I do is ministry. Serving on the board of INELDA is ministry to me. Ministry is the word “service.” It’s all about serving people. It’s all about helping people. So, within ministry for me, there’s the church. Within ministry for me there’s healthcare. Within ministry for me, there’s business, and consulting and speaking and things of that nature. All those are aspects of ministry.
Ministry leads me to help others, from a spiritual standpoint, from the mental standpoint, even the physical aspect. To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help people to gain employment opportunities, to gain second chances at life. We want to amplify those things, which is where the name of the church comes from.
I carry the title ‘Pastor’ into other avenues in terms of what I do. ‘Pastor’ is a simple word that means to shepherd, to lead, to bring aid and assistance to others. So, to me that term is not just relegated to the church. I think it’s relegated to anybody that wants to serve others in life. I consider myself a leader, a person who shepherds others to what I would hope to be their best life. Their best experience.
How did healthcare become part of your ministry?
About 16 years ago I was serving as an assistant pastor at a Detroit church (not Amplify Christian Church). One day Donna Clark, a chaplain from a local hospital, came looking for clergy to volunteer as chaplains because she was the only chaplain for that 270-bed hospital, and they didn’t have the budget to pay for other chaplains. I volunteered, because I’d be visiting the sick, which is one of the mandates in our scripture. That experience really heightened my awareness that this is a very valuable part of ministry. Donna Clark was a great spiritual leader at the hospital, and I learned a lot from her.
After several years, the hospital found the budget for a part time chaplain and hired me. Three years later, that hospital closed. However, I was asked to be the manager of spiritual care for our main, 770-bed hospital. I was the first African American to hold that position. (The City of Detroit’s population is 78% African American.) Twelve years later I moved into the position that I’m in now in administration, as the Leader of Patient Experience (LPE) for our hospital. It’s been a remarkable journey. As LPE, I work directly with our executive team to ensure that everybody that comes here to our hospital is treated with dignity, honor, and respect.
During those twelve years I became involved with palliative care at the hospital; I also helped to engineer and start a national palliative care program. This led to the late, great Doctor Richard Payne, from Duke University, asking me to become a faculty member at the Institute on Care at the End of Life at Duke University, and to develop teaching models for EOL care for African Americans in particular, and for human beings in general. I developed the spiritual aspect of that effort. (Dr. Richard Payne was an internationally known expert in the areas of pain relief, palliative care, oncology, and neurology. He directed the Duke University Institute on Care at the End of Life where he was a Professor of Medicine and Divinity.)
Dr. Payne was a good friend of mine – he became, actually, my adopted big brother in healthcare. Working at Duke University gave me opportunities to travel and speak with him and a group of doctors and lawyers, including specialists in health care. And working through Duke University, speaking all over the country, led me to some of the circles that I’m in now on a national scale. It’s given me opportunity. I’ve written for the New York Times and have been published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine. (Both articles are behind pay walls).
I believe that ultimately is how Henry Fersko-Weiss found out about me, and asked me to speak to INELDA doulas in a webinar titled “Getting Real About Racial Disparities in EOL Care.” I love what I do. And I don’t see myself ever not being in healthcare.
And for all of that I really give credit to Dr. Richard Payne. He blessed my life. Losing him a couple of years ago was really hard, but his legacy continues to live on. I have dedicated my healthcare work in his honor and his memory. Spirituality and medicine really are my expertise. Bringing the two together, and understanding how the two work together, gives the patient an opportunity to thrive as much as can be expected in the healthcare setting.
Dr. Payne saw great gaps in how people were being treated who were African American. How decision making was very poor for African Americans at the end of life. That there was no advance care planning or preparation. That there was lack of knowledge about palliative care and hospice care. That there was a lack of knowledge about benefits of having routine checkups and trusting the system. I mean, there were just huge gaps there. You only went to the doctor if there was an emergency.
Those disparities have played out in things like lack of access to doctors, and what I would call upstream care – that’s the care given to individuals when you have a primary care doctor. A lot of African Americans don’t have that because of the mistrust in the medical system. How people have been treated in the past has a lot to do with the lack of trust in the medical system today. Even down to vaccines for COVID-19. African Americans don’t want to feel like they’re being experimented on. We as a people in America who have been mistreated in so many different ways by various institutions, healthcare included. So, faces like mine who are in leadership in healthcare helps individuals to begin to garner the trust that’s necessary for them to receive the care that is rightfully theirs.
Dr. Payne and I tried – and were successful – in helping individuals to move more upstream and see themselves as taking advantage of healthcare as a right and not something that was there to harm them or offend them. We also helped non-African Americans respect and appreciate African Americans as being human beings who were just coming to them as individuals who wanted and needed healthcare.
That’s why I’ve consulted and talked with hospice programs about being more involved on the living side of individuals. Sponsoring Little League baseball teams, or football teams. Just having educational programs about how to live healthier. You can be a hospice program and do that. That way, we’ve already built a relationship. I know that you have my best interests at heart. When it gets to the point where I’m dying, I can entrust my final days, or my final months to you, because I know that you had my best interests at heart while I was living. But if I don’t feel like you have my best interests at heart while I’m living and while I’m healthy, why should I think you would have my best interest at heart when I’m dying?
Also, there are very few, if any, African American led hospital programs and not a lot of African Americans who are involved with recruiting patients for hospice. My advice to every hospice program is to find ways to enhance how individuals live, so they can trust their lives to you when they are dying.
This ends part one of our conversation with Pastor Corey. Please look for part two in next month’s issue of INELDA Monthly.