COMMENTARY: Realigning religious health missions

c. 1997 Religion News Service (Former President Jimmy Carter is chairman of The Carter Center in Atlanta. The center promotes peace, democracy and health worldwide. Its Interfaith Health Program helps faith communities nationwide prevent disease and promote wellness.) UNDATED _ Health care continues to be one of the most critical and volatile issues around. A […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Former President Jimmy Carter is chairman of The Carter Center in Atlanta. The center promotes peace, democracy and health worldwide. Its Interfaith Health Program helps faith communities nationwide prevent disease and promote wellness.)

UNDATED _ Health care continues to be one of the most critical and volatile issues around. A little-recognized aspect of the current health care”revolution,”however, is the selling of religious hospitals _ transactions that could, within the next decade, provide faith groups with between $15 billion and $30 billion.


This trend, which the June issue of”Hospitals and Health Networks”calls”the largest redeployment of charitable assets the country has ever seen,”has already begun impacting communities across the country.

Although some religious hospitals can compete with for-profit corporations, many are opting to sell their facilities because reduced profit margins make it more difficult to serve those who cannot pay.

When religious hospitals are purchased by for-profit companies, however, proceeds are often used to create new, sizable foundations that are required to continue the mission of the religious hospitals: to improve the health of those who are most vulnerable in our society.

To accomplish this mission, these new foundations have begun to work together to implement a new approach to health _ one that focuses more on communities and the prevention of illness.

In March, The Carter Center, and InterHealth of St. Paul, an interfaith health care alliance, will bring together representatives of religious hospitals and foundations from across the nation. Our overall goal is to explore the role foundations can play in building healthy communities by a public health approach that stresses prevention and looks at whole populations, not just individual patients.

The need to emphasize prevention is a direct result of the health community having learned in recent years that negative lifestyle choices, such as smoking, eating poorly, and excessive drinking, cause most premature deaths (before age 65) in the United States.

Foundations, meanwhile, have learned that addressing communities is necessary because lifestyle choices are often greatly influenced by the marketing ploys of major profit-driven companies that target the masses. More and more, new religious health organizations are recognizing the power of such forces and designing ways to counter them _ a new and somewhat daunting task for many of them.


Creating, implementing, and maintaining a public health approach to building health is a challenge for most foundations for two reasons.

First, most leaders of these organizations come from a traditional hospital administration background _ one that seeks to manage illness rather than prevent it. Many, therefore, must develop new analytical tools to approach health from a prevention-based perspective.

Second, the health of any community is strongly linked to choices made not only by individual residents, but also neighboring companies, civic groups, and other local organizations. Recognizing this, foundations are beginning to strengthen collaborations with leaders from a wide variety of backgrounds, including business, education, social services, theology, and medicine.

For at least 100 years, religious health care institutions have been partners with government. At the turn of the century, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews expressed their faith by constructing and operating hospitals to serve those who had nowhere else to go. In fact, many of the hospitals and health care institutions that have been most valuable to the poor, the elderly, and the vulnerable were built as a result of close collaboration between faith groups and government policy-makers.

The new foundations can _ and hopefully will _ take the lead in maintaining this positive relationship between government and medicine.

It is also important to remember that although $30 billion in proceeds is substantial, it is a relatively small amount when compared to the vast overall sums generated by the business of health care _ or the dollar amount the government is currently cutting from welfare programs. New foundations can make a difference, but they cannot do it all.


In light of their deeply rooted and meaningful history, the new foundations have much to offer surrounding communities by incorporating the religious principles upon which they were founded into their missions and practices. Together with partners in government and the private sector, they can start exploring ways of ensuring that the faith values that helped inspire and create this country’s health care system remain an integral part of it.

Although our March meeting will not provide all the answers, it will give foundation decision-makers, hospital administrators, clergy, and community leaders an opportunity to develop a collaborative framework through which they can begin to make their goals a reality.

(Editor’s note:”Realigning Religious Health Assets”will be held at The Carter Center in Atlanta on March 9 and 10. Additional information about the meeting and The Carter Center is available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.emory.edu/CARTER_CENTER).

MJP END CARTER

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!