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According to a story in United Methodist News Services, a United Methodist physician who believes the denomination's clergy are among the least healthy professional groups in the United States is featured on a blog on Time magazine's global health update site.

Dr. Scott Morris, a physician, United Methodist pastor and executive director of the Church Health Center in Memphis, Tenn., said clergy health has declined to a point where attention is needed. He added that 50 years ago, Methodist clergy were in the top five healthiest professions in America, and now they are in the bottom five least healthy. ?We cannot have a healthy church if we don?t have healthy leadership,? Morris said.

The Baltimore-Washington Conference is sponsoring an aggressive, and cost saving, wellness campaign to make sure its clergy don?t fall under the unhealthy category.

As members of the Health Flex plan, Baltimore-Washington Conference clergy members are eligible to use an online health assessment tool, called Health Quotient, which provides them with a personal report and a prioritized list of re-commended actions to help them design their own wellness plans. The assessment, which takes 15 minutes to complete, can be found at www.gbophb.org.

Denomination officials feel so strongly about this that they are offering financial incentives to conferences whose pastors fill out the assessment and receive an
annual physical.

If by December 2007, 60 percent of clergy who are participating in the Health Flex Plan take the assessment and get an annual health care check-up, the conference will receive a five percent reduction in health care premiums, which will be passed on to the clergy.

?Every clergy person needs to take this health assessment,? said Frank Gould, the chair of the Conference Board of Pensions and Health Benefits. ?It?s easy, it?s important and it just may save their lives.?

Under the Health Flex plan, annual physicals are free. Still, in 2006, only 18 percent of the 663 active conference clergy completed the Health Quotient survey. Year-to-date figures were not available at press time.

Free health screenings will take place in each region in late October and early November. Martha Knight, treasurer of the Baltimore-Washington Conference, said specific dates will be publicized soon.

Gould said clergy are notorious for not taking care of themselves. But he added that there is no legitimate excuse.

?It?s good stewardship,? Gould said. ?It just makes sense. We have to pound the message home.?

According to a story on the Duke Divinity School Web site, in the 1950s, a major study began following a large cohort of clergy. The researchers found that clergy had lower rates of disease for virtually every possible diagnosis and lived longer and healthier lives than any other professional group.
 
Later, two other studies emerged that were conducted on an entirely different and later generation of clergy. The first, published in 1983, found that Protestant clergy had the highest overall work-related stress of various religious professionals and the next-to-lowest amount of personal resources to cope with the strain.
 
The second, published in 1999, found that clergy have one of the highest death rates from heart disease of any occupation.

?Approximately 80 percent of the illness in the United States, including eight of the nine leading causes of death, is preventable,? said Gould, who worries that ?United Methodist pastors now fall into the category of the five least healthy professions.?

For more information about the conference?s health care plan, call Linda Gamble at 410-309-3470 or .