Dr. Scott Morris will step down as CEO of Church Health, the nonprofit he founded 36 years ago to provide affordable health care for uninsured and underserved Memphians.
Church Health’s chief financial officer, Jennie Robbins, will take the helm starting July 1.
Morris will work collaboratively with Robbins during the transition period and continue to play a pivotal role within the organization, focusing on direct patient care and development initiatives.
“I’m not retiring; I’m just moving into a different role,” said Morris, a physician and Methodist minister who founded Church Health in 1987. Initially a clinic for the working poor, it operated out of a house on Peabody Avenue, treating 12 patients on its first day.
In 2017, Church Health relocated to its current space in Crosstown Concourse, where it now handles more than 60,000 patient encounters annually. It has since become the largest faith-based, privately funded health clinic in the United States. Morris has long been the public face of the organization.
“For too long, too much attention has been focused on me,” he said.
His successor, Jennie Robbins, 51, previously worked in commercial lending with BancorpSouth, Bank of America, and Regions National Bank in Memphis. Robbins joined Church Health in 2007 and has served in several roles, including director of the Memphis Plan, the nonprofit’s affordable health care plan for small businesses and self-employed individuals in lower-wage jobs.
In her current role as chief financial officer, Robbins oversees the organization’s growth, fiscal stability, financial systems, policies, and procedures.
“Jennie is a charismatic figure, she’s got a great sense of humor and she relates to people very quickly,” Morris said. “I think people don’t know her because as a chief financial officer she oftentimes stays in the background. But she’s going to be a truly wonderful leader for us.”
Robbins was selected as the nonprofit’s CEO following a national search that eventually led back to her.
“For years, Scott has allowed me to operate in a CEO position with a good many initiatives, primarily around the financial space,” she said. “He has kind of groomed me to do this for a long time. And maybe we just had to go outside to make sure it was going to be the right choice.”
She’s poised to lead Church Health into its next phase of growth and innovation.
“I think my 17 years of experience and being entrenched in some of our systems and processes allows me to be able to ask questions a little bit differently,” she said.
Robbins said her first priority is to gain a comprehensive understanding of patient barriers to accessing primary care.
“I want to really understand where some of those gaps are so we can make sure that patients have access,” she said.
Robbins said she will continue to build upon the model that Morris, whom she calls “a visionary,” established.
“Our mission is not changing,” she said. “We are a faith-based, not-for-profit organization that specializes in primary health care. And we are called to do this work. Memphis is called to help all of our people.”
