Academic medical literature and news outlets extensively document how older individuals in communities of color, especially African American communities, are dying disproportionately of COVID-19 due to ongoing societal, racial, and healthcare disparities. Fear of death and suffering are acutely elevated in Black communities; yet, African Americans have been facing, coping with, and overcoming American societal racism and subsequent detriments to our mental health for centuries. Predominately African American churches (hereafter referred to as the "Black Church") have always served a historical, cultural, contextual, and scientifically validated role in the mental health well-being of African American communities coping with American racism. Nonetheless, buildings of worship closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-March 2020. This article is a first-hand perspective of five Black internists/psychiatrists who are deeply involved in both academic medicine and leadership positions within the Black Church. It will explore how the physical closure of Black Churches during this period of increased mental stress, as caused by healthcare inequities revealed by the COVID-19 epidemic, is likely to be uniquely taxing to the mental health of African Americans, particularly older African Americans, who must cope with American racism without physical access to the Black Church for the first time in history. Keywords COVID-19. Church. Religion. African American. Black. Racism I, Reverend Dr. Maria Black, write today as an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, an older African American woman, and a board-certified internist with nearly 40 years of experience in general and academic medicine in Georgia. I write alongside my daughter, Dr.

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The advocacy of recovery-oriented practices in mental health care with its emphasis on freedom and choice in care has been gaining considerable traction in recent years. In response to the growing recognition and promotion of recovery-oriented services, several training initiatives have been developed to bring about mental health care system transformation. These initiatives, however, have been primarily focused on broad organizational and procedural changes as well as hospital and clinic staff development.Relatively neglected have been initiatives to educate physicians and doctorally trained psychologists in the concepts and practices of recovery-oriented care. This article describes a case study of the efforts of Project GREAT (Georgia Recovery-Based Educational Approach to Treatment) that has aspired to transform the education and practice of an academic department of psychiatry into a recovery-oriented one with the focus on shaping the recovery knowledge, attitudes, and practices of psychiatry and psychology faculty and trainees. Core issues in the transformation effort were identified and led to the implementation of the following change interventions: (a) administrative leadership and support, (b) consumer mediated interventions, (c) educational presentations/materials, (d) interactive small groups/ program champions, (e) reminders/prompts/practice tools, (f) newsletters/pamphlets, and (g) educational outreach visits. It is proposed that this transformation experience provided valuable lessons that are generally applicable to other academic programs for psychiatrists and psychologists attempting to adopt recovery-oriented training and care.

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