Feature story
Fast-Track <a href="https://<a href="https://healthylife7.com/health-department-offers-update-on-cyclosporiasis-cases/” title=”Health Department offers update on cyclosporiasis cases”>healthylife7.com/how-wildfire-smoke-affects-your-health/” title=”How Wildfire Smoke Affects Your Health”>Health and WCC forge global partnership to advance faith-informed urban health
Fast-Track Health and the World Council of Churches (WCC) announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding establishing a strategic partnership to mobilize faith communities as key partners in advancing equitable, inclusive, and person-centered urban health across the global Fast-Track Cities network.
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Photo:
Albin Hillert/WCC
The collaboration recognizes that faith communities are among the world’s most trusted institutions and play an indispensable role in promoting health, compassion, social justice, and community resilience. Through the partnership, Fast-Track Health and WCC will jointly develop practical frameworks, tools, research, pilot initiatives, and advocacy strategies that strengthen collaboration between municipal governments, public health systems, and faith-based organizations.
The agreement outlines an agenda that includes development of a global Faith and Health Framework, a Faith Community Townhall Toolkit, a pilot interfaith town hall series in selected Fast-Track Cities, a Global Faith and Spirituality Survey, a Global Faith and Health Report, and a high-level faith-focused side event during the global Fast-Track Cities 2026 conference in Berlin.
Rev. Prof. Dr. Jerry Pillay, WCC general secretary, stated: “Building on its long tradition of diaconal service and advocacy, WCC engages churches and interfaith partners as trusted community anchors that can address the physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions of wellbeing. In collaboration with Fast-Track Health, WCC will help develop faith-informed frameworks, community dialogues, and public engagement that strengthen trust in health services, combat stigma and misinformation, and mobilize congregations as active agents of healing in urban settings.”
“This partnership with the World Council of Churches affirms that faith communities are indispensable partners in building healthier, more inclusive cities,” said Dr. José M. Zuniga, President/CEO of Fast-Track Health. “By bringing together municipal leadership, public health expertise, community engagement, and the moral authority of faith communities, we have an extraordinary opportunity to improve health outcomes while advancing dignity, compassion, and social justice.”
The partnership extends beyond traditional public health collaboration by embracing the physical, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions of well-being. Through evidence generation, implementation science, and community engagement, the two organizations aim to create scalable models that cities around the world can adapt to address HIV, other communicable diseases, noncommunicable diseases, and climate-related health impacts.
Fast-Track Health is a global nonprofit organization working with more than 600 municipalities worldwide to accelerate equitable, data-informed, and person-centered responses to communicable and noncommunicable diseases, strengthen urban health systems, and address the health impacts of climate change through implementation science, strategic partnerships, and community engagement
