Aisling Maki - The Daily News -

Back when Dr. Scott Morris, CEO of the Church Health Center, was a fourth-year medical student on a summer research project in Zimbabwe, he met with a nyanga, or witch doctor, to better understand the relationship between faith and healing.

Morris noticed that patients of the nyanga also consulted with a doctor who practiced Western medicine, but they always went first to the nyanga.

“The Zimbabweans who went to both the nyanga and the doctor knew you cannot separate body and spirit,” Morris writes in the first chapter of his new book, “Health Care You Can Live With: Discover Wholeness in Body and Spirit,” released this week by Barbour Publishing Inc.

“Treating one without the other does not make you well. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying every physical symptom results from some failure in a person’s life. I am saying being well is about more than fixing a broken part of your body. The dominant approach to health care in the United States concerns broken bodies more than broken lives. We’ve developed systems that put people through hoops to get care but too often don’t make them healthier.”

Spiritual well being and its connection to the health of our bodies is the focus of Morris’ book, whose timing was synchronous; Morris had been contemplating writing a book for some time when Barbour Publishing approached him.

“I’m a storyteller, and I’ve told a lot of stories about patients I’ve seen over the years,” he told The Daily News. “I’ve used their stories as a way to demonstrate that this whole idea works and can make a difference in people’s lives.”

In his book, Morris, a physician and United Methodist minister and arguably one of Memphis’ most influential citizens, also asserts his views on the contentious, ongoing health care debate in Washington.

“I am very frustrated with how this debate has gone because it has not been about improving the health of Americans,” he said. “It has been about how you pay for something, whether or not it works. The question of ‘do we have it right?’ hasn’t really been asked.”

Morris said that when it comes to health care, Americans have too frequently come to depend on technology.

“We’ve developed an unholy love affair with technology,” he said. “We’ve come to believe ‘I can live my life any way I want without worrying about the consequences because if my body breaks down, the doctor will fix it. We have some special magic tool that can put me back together.’ Well, our technology is not that good, and the doctor is not that smart.”

He said a better approach is to “develop a plan for yourself, personally and in the community you’re a part of, to see health as something that’s more than just the absence of disease. It’s ultimately about helping you achieve the goals for living: more joy, more love and being driven closer to God.”

Morris said that in today’s world, two-thirds of patients seek treatment for illnesses that can be prevented or controlled with lifestyle changes, and 50 percent of patients who see doctors have no medical conditions.

“People come to the doctor today for reasons they used to come to the priest…they have headaches, the doctor does a CAT and everything’s normal and fine,” he said. “But in reality, there’s something wrong; that person’s marriage is falling apart. Doctors aren’t trained to deal with what are fundamentally spiritual problems.”

He said gentleness, kindness, compassion, humility, patience and love are not words you typically hear in the doctor’s office, “But we believe these virtues ultimately make life worth living.”

Morris arrived in Memphis in 1986 with a mission to begin a health care ministry for the working poor.

He knew no one in the city, but chose Memphis because it’s historically one the nation’s poorest major metropolises, one with a vast population of uninsured citizens without access to quality health care.

“There are two things that Memphis has in great abundance: poverty and religion,” he said. “Poor people have an amazing spiritual abundance. If we could find a way to spend some of their spiritual wealth on improving their health, then we’ve won the big prize.”

Morris renovated and refurbished a dilapidated boarding house on South Bellevue, and in 1987 the Church Health Center opened with just Morris and one nurse. They saw 12 patients on the first day.

Today, the clinic, with a $13 million annual budget, logs more than 36,000 patient visits each year, and includes a staff of more than 200, plus hundreds of community members who volunteer their time and services.

Nine years later, Morris and his team opened the Hope & Healing Wellness Center, which sees 120,000 visitors annually.

“We’ve designed something called the ‘model for healthy living’ that takes various aspects of our lives, from family to work to your religious life to the medical side of things and the spiritual dimension of life, to marry this up with a plan for becoming healthy,” said Morris, who adds that all new patients are required to attend the Wellness Center to discuss nutrition and spiritual well-being before they ever see a doctor.

He said there are now about 30 clinics nationwide modeled after the Church Health Center.

And, he said, “Health Care You Can Live With” is in a sense a manual of the mission and ministry of the Church Health Center.

“I had a really hard time with my picture being on the cover of this book because this is absolutely not about me,” said Morris. “I’m the front guy for this whole thing, but this is about the work of the Church Health Center. We now have a manual that can tell anyone what the center is about, not only today, but what we’re going to be about in the next ten years.”

Morris has been busy doing print, radio and television interviews with media outlets from Arizona to New York.

Meanwhile, the Church Health Center team is authoring a series of books called “40 Days to a Healthier You,” which will be sold in bookstores across the country.

The book release party for “Health Care You Can Live With” takes place Sunday from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Church Health Wellness Center, 1115 Union Avenue. Dr. Morris will speak at 2:30 p.m.