Faith Community Pharmacy expands operations, Faith Community Health Network to provide comprehensive care, May 2026

Bella Bailey

Multimedia Correspondent

The Faith Community Pharmacy had humble beginnings in a “glorified closet,” inside of a Northern Kentucky St. Vincent dePaul, said Aaron Broomall, executive director, Faith Community Health Network. Since their operations began in 2002 the no-cost pharmacy has served over 10,800 individuals, dispensing more than 650,000 prescriptions.

Their community impact has decreased emergency room visits by 60 percent since 2021, and decreased hospitalizations by 74 percent. But the care provided by the pharmacy is limited by its very nature, “because we can only help people that have prescriptions,” said Mr. Broomall.

“We’ve always had dreams of opening a free clinic in Northern Kentucky, for a really long time,” said Mr. Broomall, but the timing, “never seemed right.”

In 2023 however, the team at Faith Community Pharmacy decided, it was time. “We started looking at it more in earnest, examining what we had, examining what the needs were in our community,” said Mr. Broomall.

The original strategic plan had the new Faith Community Clinic opening in 2027. However, at the beginning of 2025, legislation was passed that “has significant ramifications on our uninsured population in Northern Kentucky,” said Mr. Broomall, whose estimations has the uninsured population of Northern Kentucky rising to more than 40,000 by 2027. With this in mind the new Faith Community Clinic will be opening its doors in Newport, May of 2026, ready to serve the impoverished and uninsured with free, comprehensive healthcare.

With the addition of the clinic, the operations have turned into a health network, warranting a new name, The Faith Community Health Network. This includes both the Faith Community Pharmacy and Clinic.

The Faith Community Clinic will be staffed by volunteer providers, nurses and lab techs, a majority of which are being provided by the St. Elizabeth Healthcare System. The clinic will also have a CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendment) approved lab onsite for urinalysis and blood work.

The clinic will also complete a social determinant of health screening. “Those are all these other factors that contribute to health that are not just diagnosis and medication. This can be anything from housing to food to workforce to abuse situations,” said Mr. Broomall.

From that screening, a patient may be directed to community resources so that they can receive what they need, outside of medicinal care.

“We’re really trying to address the holistic person, and all of the challenges that they have, so that they can get to a point of thriving,” said Mr. Broomall.

Part of holistic care is spiritual healing, said Mr. Broomall. “Healing is not just a matter of the physical body, but it has other components to it also. One of those components is spiritual healing,” he said.

“Our hospitality team will offer to pray with every one of our patients that come in … we know that many patients that come to us, they’re stressed, they’re worried, they’re afraid … we want to do everything we can to put their mind at ease and to meet them where they are, and that certainly includes spiritual care,” said Mr. Broomall.

The Faith Community Clinic will have a Spiritual Advisory Committee, whose founding board chair is the Dioceses own Msgr. William Cleves, pastor, Holy Spirit Parish, Newport. All lay members of the hospitality team will undergo training to ensure there is no “spiritual harm,” to patients of the clinic.

“We want to ensure that everybody who is talking to our patients, is doing it in a way that promotes a God that loves them, and God that’s there for them, and a God that wants the best for them,” said Mr. Broomall.

This comprehensive, holistic approach to healthcare will make the hour that patients spend at the Faith Community Clinic, “one of the most valuable hours they have in their year,” said Mr. Broomall.

“By the time they give us that hour and they walk out the door, they will understand where they’re at with their health, they will have had somebody offer them care for their spiritual needs, we will have talked to them about the other challenges that they’re facing and worked with them to connect them to other resources so that they can be holistically healed and be on a better trajectory towards thriving, and we will have provided them with critical education,” he said.