Count What God Is Doing: A Call for Faith-Based Health Organizations to Strengthen Health Asset Mapping
By Simon Sentongo and Doug Fountain
Editor’s note: Christian Connections for International Health (CCIH) serves as the secretariat of the Christian Health Asset Mapping Consortium (CHAMC). The Africa Christian Health Associations Platform (ACHAP) is one of CHAMC’s founding members.
Across Africa and in many low- and middle-income countries, faith-based providers are woven into the fabric of national health systems. Christian health services run hospitals and clinics, train health workers, and support community programs that reach families who might otherwise be missed.
But when decision-makers look at the data to plan budgets, staff facilities, respond to emergencies, or target investments, the faith-based footprint is often blurry because facility lists are incomplete, ownership is recorded inconsistently, and information quickly goes out of date.
We can change that together.
That’s why the Christian Health Asset Mapping Consortium (CHAMC) exists: to help Christian health assets be accurately documented, understood, and appropriately included in national health planning. CHAMC brings together Christian health associations, church networks, ministries of health, researchers, and technical partners so the evidence base for faith-linked health services is credible, practical, and owned by the faith community itself.
Our shared platform, Faith Health Assets, already brings together country data, analysis, and learning. Recent CHAMC work informed the 2025 Update of the Summary Data Report from 22 Christian Health Networks in Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as related briefs on health worker training institutions—along with a closer look at how often faith-based providers are underrepresented in major datasets.
Now we need to take the next step: strengthen facility lists, connect them to workforce and service data, and make sure faith-based organizations help lead this work—not just benefit from it. We’re inviting faith-based health organizations and networks to support (and participate in) the next generation of Christian health asset mapping.
Why this matters right now
Health financing is shifting in many places, and governments and partners are making hard decisions about what services can be sustained and where gaps may open. In that environment, planners are asking practical questions such as:
- Where are service delivery gaps likely to emerge?
- Which providers can sustain essential care?
- Who has infrastructure in underserved regions?
- Where can workforce pipelines support continuity of care?
Christian health networks are often part of the answer, especially in rural and underserved communities, but only if their work is visible in the information leaders use to plan.
When Christian facilities are missing or misclassified in national and global datasets, they can also be missing from financing, supply chains, emergency response planning, and reform conversations. Good data doesn’t replace mission, but it helps protect mission by ensuring that Christian service is recognized and appropriately resourced.
Three Practical Priorities for Faith-Based Health Asset Mapping
1. Clear national counts of Christian health facilities
At a minimum, every country should be able to estimate:
- Number of Christian inpatient facilities (hospitals and facilities with beds)
- Number of Christian outpatient clinics
- National totals for all facilities in those categories
- Christian market share as a percentage of national totals
These basics move us from broad claims to shared, measurable evidence that can be used in national planning.
2. Service volume captured in DHIS2 and other national systems
Where countries use DHIS2 (or similar platforms), we should be able to estimate, not perfectly but credibly, how much care Christian facilities provide, including:
- Christian share of inpatient admissions
- Christian share of outpatient visits
- National totals for these services
- Market share by ownership type
Facility counts matter, but service volume helps leaders understand real system capacity.
3. A usable, up-to-date national facility list
Countries also need practical facility lists that can actually be used by ministries of health, Christian health associations, and partners. At a minimum, each record should include:
- Facility name
- Level of care
- Town or district
- Ownership tradition (Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, Pentecostal, ecumenical, etc.)
- Basic geo-location data for mapping
With these basics in place, we can do stronger mapping and analysis—supporting smarter partnerships, faster emergency coordination, and a clearer description of how Christian health services contribute to national systems.
Facilities are only part of the story
Even strong facility data won’t capture everything the Church contributes to health.
Christian health impact also shows up through:
- Community health programs
- Church-based prevention and education efforts
- Maternal and child outreach
- Volunteer networks
- Social support services
- Crisis mobilization through congregations and faith leaders
Some of these contributions are harder to measure, but they are central to the faith-based witness in health. Facility mapping is a starting point and a foundation we can build on, rather than the whole picture.
Link facility data to health worker training
CHAMC has also highlighted the important role Christian institutions play in training nurses, midwives, physicians, and other health workers.
That’s why facility data should be connected to workforce and training data. In many contexts, the same faith-based systems that operate hospitals and clinics also help produce the workforce those services depend on.
If we map services without understanding the workforce pipeline behind them, we only see part of the system.
If we don’t tell our story well, someone else will
This may be the most urgent point.
If the faith community stays on the sidelines, others will increasingly describe the Christian health presence using incomplete proxies and partial information, such as:
- AI-generated estimates built on incomplete source material
- World Health Organization datasets that frequently exclude faith-based ownership indicators
- Open-source platforms such as Healthsites.io
- Secondary analyses that miss denominational networks and community programs
Some of these tools are useful. But none should become the default voice for describing Christian health systems, especially when Christian health associations and networks can provide more accurate, contextual, and up-to-date information.
This is our story and our responsibility to tell well.
When we don’t participate, we quietly hand that responsibility to someone else.
A call to lead and a practical invitation to support this work
The Christian health community has long served faithfully. In this moment, we’re also being called to lead with clarity so national health leaders can plan with a complete picture of who is providing care.
We invite Christian Health Associations, faith-based health networks, hospitals and training institutions, ministries of health, researchers, and development partners to work with CHAMC on the next generation of asset mapping. Here are concrete ways faith-based health organizations can support:
- Share or help validate an up-to-date facility list (name, level of care, location, ownership tradition).
- Help align faith-based facility records with national registries and DHIS2 reporting where possible.
- Contribute workforce and training-institution data so that service delivery can be linked to staffing pipelines.
- Nominate a focal person (data/monitoring, operations, or program staff) to coordinate with CHAMC.
- Support the work financially or by providing technical assistance with data cleaning, geocoding, and analysis.
Use the findings in your own advocacy so faith-based service is included in planning and financing conversations.
Better data will not replace the mission. It will help safeguard it by ensuring the reach, scale, and readiness of faith-based services are visible when decisions are made.
Better evidence will not define Christian service. It will help others recognize, partner with, and plan alongside it.
Visit faithhealthassets.org to learn more, check out data briefs and resources, and connect with CHAMC to support ongoing mapping efforts.