The HHS Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives (known hereafter as "The Partnership Center") is the Department’s liaison to the faith community and to grassroots organizations.
Thus, the Partnership Center is a mechanism for the department to engage and communicate with faith communities and grassroots organizations, ensuring that local institutions, which hold community trust, have up-to-date information regarding health and human service activities and resources in their area.
Through the Center, we work to build partnerships with community and faith-based organizations, which help HHS serve individuals, families, and communities in need. The Partnership Center works in collaboration with any and all of the 27 agencies that make up HHS to extend the reach and impact of HHS-related programs into communities, as well as to encourage faith-based and community organizations in their work.
The Partnership Center is committed to helping grassroots organizations access the necessary tools to reach those in need. It exists to supply information, resources and encouragement to faith-based organizations in their service to their communities.
The Center works to enable faith-based and community organizations to partner with the government to achieve the goals of HHS. These are:
- Making the health-care system work for our communities;
- Addressing the opioid crisis ravaging our families and communities;
- Reducing childhood obesity; and
- Addressing serious mental illness.
Additionally, the Center has been challenged to seek out and remove barriers to full and active engagement by the faith-based community and to champion religious liberty in all HHS programs and initiatives. The priorities of the Partnership Center are consistent with the freedoms assured in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and ensuring the free exercise of religion of individuals and faith-based organizations.
