CHA is unveiling a collection of videos and related resources that Catholic health care leaders and others in the ministry can use to deepen their understanding of Catholic social teaching and apply the tenets meaningfully to their work.
The collection of resources, "Let Dignity and Justice Flourish: Catholic Social Tradition for the Healing Ministry" — is available on the CHA website.
The videos feature three Catholic health care leaders: Jim Dover, president and CEO of Avera Health; Greg Hoffman, chief financial officer of Providence St. Joseph Health; and Gabriela Saenz, senior vice president of corporate services at CHRISTUS Health.
Darren Henson, CHA's senior director of ministry formation, and Karla Keppel, CHA's associate director of mission services, are also hosts for this initial set of videos.
Henson says the videos are a refresh of CHA's Catholic social teaching resources that was "long overdue." He explains that CHA created the resources in response to mission and formation leaders who asked for more theological content to apply to their health care ministries.
More than 15 years ago, CHA created a CD-ROM exploring the topic, as well as longer videos that are still available on YouTube, but leaders asked for shorter videos. CHA leaders wanted their update to apply the teachings to today's issues.
The new videos explore three main tenets of Catholic social teaching: human dignity, common good, and social justice. There is one video about 14 minutes each on each topic, as well as links to shorter segments of the videos. Each video comes with facilitator guides that include discussion prompts, activities, Scripture citations and prayers.
"What's unique about this series was we didn't just want this to be didactic, of us presenting all of this pretty dense information," Henson says.
That's why CHA staff conducted in-person interviews with the health care leaders to ask how the principles applied to their own work and ministries.
In the video on human dignity, Dover speaks about Avera's home base of South Dakota, where 10% of the population is Native American and their life expectancy is 22 years lower than everyone else's. According to Catholic tradition and teaching, "that's not OK," he says. "So what do we now do about that?"
Dover says the Avera Research Institute is diving in to find out why so they can help.
CHA staff in Washington provided input because their work and partnerships routinely involve integrating aspects of social justice and the wider tradition.
The videos are the start of a longer-term project of refreshing CHA's resources on the Catholic social tradition, Henson says.
The videos are available at chausa.org/cst.