Healthbridge Global links Gospel partners

From providing maternity services for Romanian women to helping Afghan refugees in central California, Healthbridge Global’s mission is to use health care as a bridge to the Gospel.

Since 2012, the ministry founded by Samaritan Ministries member Jon Hallsted has partnered with Christian doctors and organizations worldwide to bring the Gospel to local populations by meeting their health care needs.

Jon’s earlier career, as he describes it, was “a mixture of ministry and health care”: five years in pastoral ministry, seven years overseas as a missionary, and a combined 18 years in both for-profit and nonprofit health care contexts, including health care management.

“All of that combined led my wife, Rebecca, and I to start Healthbridge Global in 2012 when we returned home from living overseas in a medical missional capacity,” Jon said. “We didn’t want what we had been a part of to die, and we just knew there was more to do.”

During the first nine years, Healthbridge Global was a “labor of love” for the Hallsteds. Two years ago, Jon started working for Healthbridge full time.

Healthbridge raises funds for local workers, supplies medical equipment, and offers a significant amount of coaching and relational support. But its role primarily is to come alongside the personnel so these facilities can stand independently.

Health care as a bridge

“Closed cultures like Romania are places you can go, but there’s just an inherent resistance culturally to the Gospel,” Jon said.

Healthbridge wants to break through those cultural barriers by meeting people’s health care needs. Jon believes this method comes straight from the Gospels.

“If you read through the Gospels, you’ll see that Jesus performed 34 distinct miracles, and 26 of the individually recorded miracles were health care miracles,” Jon said. “This meant physically touching people’s bodies. So, we believe that health care is still the best and most significant bridge to bring the Gospel to closed nations—the places you can’t go without having a good reason for being there.”

Healthbridge takes its model from the ministry of Jesus.

“Jesus could have spent the majority of his time multiplying food and feeding people. He could have multiplied money. He could have done what most people were expecting him to do at that time, using His power to generate political change,” Jon said, “but I just always come back to the fact that Jesus was so intent on ministering to the human body. I think there’s a mystery there. Jesus cares about our physical bodies in a way that we don’t understand. There’s this connection between our physical healing and our spiritual salvation. I’m not saying they’re the same thing, but there’s a connection there, and we’re just trying to live that out.”

Worldwide impact

Healthbridge Global has had both local and worldwide impact.

Healing Grove

About 40,000 Afghan refugees have settled in Healthbridge’s base of Sacramento, California, since Afghanistan was overrun by Taliban forces in 2021, so one of their focuses right now is taking on a community close to home.

“Healing Grove is a project with U.S. doctors and Afghan doctors bringing health care to these Afghan refugees, 100 percent of whom were Muslim, no Christians among them,” Jon said.

The Healthbridge founder is excited over developments in the program, which adjusts medical care to honor Afghan cultural concerns.

“The need is enormous,” he said. “Most (of the refugees) would not be using the health care system due to cultural concerns.

While refugees can access state-provided health care through Medi-Cal, few providers participate in the program and none speak any of the Afghan languages.

But the number of doctors agreeing to help through Healing Grove is increasing. More Afghan translators also are volunteering. Then, as doctors pray for each patient, both translators and patients are hearing appeals to Jesus for healing.

In addition, a Pakistani Christian who is also a counselor has joined the Healing Grove effort to provide trauma care.

Overall, the Healthbridge goal of sharing the Gospel through health care is bearing fruit.