Three months ago, Carla, a refugee from Liberia, found herself trapped in a health-care maze.

	Martha Rial, Post-Gazette Yinka Aganga-Williams greets Pauline Igbineweka during a recent Sunday mass at St. Benedict the Moor Church. Aganga-Williams, the program director for Clergy and Churches United, helped an immigrant woman avoid surgery and find a doctor who could provide charity care. Click photo for larger image.

Uninsured and lost in an unfamiliar system, she turned to a Hill District immigrant assistance program for help finding her way.

Acculturation for Justice Access and Peace Outreach, or Ajapo, is run by Yinka Aganga-Williams, a native of Nigeria who is charged with weaving immigrants into Pittsburgh society. Her mission includes health care.

"We take their hand," said Aganga-Williams, and walk them through translations, insurance consulting and fiding primary care physicians.

Aganga-Williams was able to help Carla avoid surgery and find a doctor who provided charity care.

Ajapo is one arm of Clergy and Churches United, a clutch of seven Hill District ministries that recently launched an expanded health care partnership.

The program is necessary, said Aganga-Williams, because it provides "a wider linkage to help immigrants with an orientation to the American health care system."

Now, Clergy and Churches United, or CCU, is poised to do more.

		SCREENINGS SCHEDULE "Search Your Heart" is a new initiative aiming to improve the cardiovascular health of parishioners at seven churches in the Hill District. It is sponsored by the neighborhood's Clergy and Churches United Health and Wellness Partnership, which includes the American Heart Association and Mercy Parish Nurses Spirit of Health, a mobile health ministry. The program, funded by a $20,000 grant from Mazola oil, will provide health screenings and health and cooking classes. It will run for a year, but after six months of living a healthier lifestyle, participants will repeat the screenings to see if their blood pressure readings, blood lipid and glucose levels and weight have improved. The screenings and classes are being provided by The Spirit of Health, a ministry of the Sisters of St. Francis of Millvale, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, Regional Community of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System. Here's the schedule: Jan. 18 -- Wesley Center AME Zion Church, 2701 Centre Ave., 1 to 3 p.m. Jan. 25 -- Bethel AME Church, 2720 Webster Ave., 12:30 to 2 p.m. Feb. 1 -- Calvary Baptist Church, 2629 Wylie Ave., 12:30 to 2 p.m. Feb. 8 -- Grace Memorial Presbyterian Church, 100 Bryn Mawr Road, 12:30 to 2 p.m. Feb. 15 -- First Emmanuel Tabernacle Church, 761 Bryn Mawr Road, 1 to 3 p.m. Feb. 22 -- John Wesley AME Zion Church, 594 Herron Ave., 1 to 3 p.m. For more information about this program, call the Parish Nurse Office at Mercy: 412-232-5815. -- Erv Dyer

The group, a mix of Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, evangelical, Baptist and African Methodist churches, had each carved out a niche of care to help a community: there is day care, senior care, an after-school center, a mother-son bonding program, a recreation program for teens and Ajapo, the outreach to immigrants and refugees.

To cut program duplication, Carolyn Howard, its no-nonsense executive director, began to streamline some services and stitch others together, resulting in the Health and Wellness Partnership.

One common goal of the partnership was to use each church to direct the community toward existing, but underused, health services.

Together, working with a palette of other social services, Howard believes the churches can roll away barriers to treatment and plant the seed for healthier people and healthier families.

It's what she calls "creating a spirit of wellness on the Hill," a community plagued by negative health outcomes.

That's not a new goal -- it is one shared by dozens of grass- roots organizations and churches in the neighborhood. But CCU's emphasis is on immediate treatment, feeling that too often there is too much assessment of needs and too little practical application.

"All of us are tired of the health disparities, but we need to have people treated, not studied," Howard said. For instance, ZIP code 15219, which includes the Hill, has more diabetes than anywhere in Pennsylvania.

"You can't study away diabetes," she said. Her program advocates for more hands-on treatment, education and building trust between caregiver and community.

Among the partnership's goals are to increase immunization rates among children and improve their access to dental and eye care.

Older adults who have lost jobs and are struggling with family stress are directed toward mental health services.

People are dealing with all these issues, said Howard, and they are going to their clergy because they do not know where else to turn.

That's because the Hill District has been remade so often, people lose touch with services that are already in place, said Dr. Tracey Conti, a physician who works at the 30-year-old Matilda Theiss health clinic in Oak Hill.

And despite greater outreach, many in the black community continue to be suspicious of the health-care system, Conti said. "They fear the costs, of being researched to death and of navigating an increasingly complicated system."

The Matilda Theiss clinic recently received a federal grant to treat patients without insurance.

"One problem we have," said Conti, "is that too many see the center as one-dimensional, and think we only serve those in poverty."

More congregations can help us get the word out, she said, as "churches realize the need to take part in the healing."

Howard hopes lay health care advocates in the churches will urge folks to go to Matilda Theiss and two other Hill District health facilities: the Center City Health clinic on Bedford Avenue and the Hill House Health Center on Centre Avenue. Both are run by Primary Care Health Services, a county network of 13 centers that serve predominantly low-income communities. The flagship center is the Alma Illery clinic in Homewood.

Once Howard built the service, the community health partners came. In walked Pittsburgh Race for the Cure, the American Heart Association, the University of West Virginia, the American Cancer Society, the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, Mercy Hospital Parish Nurses and 34 other partners.

The team will continue to expand, and plans to begin education efforts about AIDS.

Heinz Endowments is providing $100,000 for two years to hire a child psychologist, who will be part of a Parent Club within the health and wellness partnership.

Existing funding will allow the centers to absorb other clients. The primary funder for Clergy and Churches United is Allegheny County's Department of Human Services Children Youth & Families Services.

Primary Health Care Services receives about $9 million a year to provide dental, psychiatric, pharmacy and special services for addictions and the homeless.

"Quality health should be within everybody's neighborhood," said Howard, "within everybody's budget."