Fall 2022 | Volume 103, Number 4
ALEX GARVEY, PhD and JESSICA WEINGARTNER, MA
Access to employment that is both meaningful and productive is a key concept of Catholic social teaching. However, there is a recognized gap for young people who have cognitive impairment. While several programs assist this group to transition from school to work, many fall short. Project SEARCH is a school-to-work transition program designed to bridge this gap. It challenges the health care system, school districts and state supportive agencies to join forces to create an arena where human dignity flourishes, communities prosper and the hospital workforce experiences benefits. Participants are provided with the opportunity not just to live life, but to live life in abundance.
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AUSTIN SCHAFER, MA, BCC
Austin Schafer serves as the manager for Mission and Pastoral Care for the Good Samaritan Hospital region with TriHealth in Cincinnati, Ohio. He's also a student in Loyola University Chicago's Health Care Mission Leadership doctoral program. Schafer had Carter Dredge, the senior vice president and lead futurist with SSM Health, as a guest speaker for one of his classes, and wanted to further explore the health care utility model Dredge spoke about there, as his curiosity was piqued about its future applications in the Catholic health care ministry. Dredge advances SSM Health's research and development, innovation and new venture activities.
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REX HOFFMAN, MD, MBA, and D.W. DONOVAN, DBe, BCC
A chief medical officer (CMO) routinely interacts with other members of the senior leadership team, including the chief executive, chief nursing officer and chief financial officer. While these relationships may be expected, there is another member of the senior leadership team that chief medical officers should strongly consider partnering with more fully: the chief mission integration officer (CMIO).
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NADINE NADAL, MPH, CPH, CHES
In the Highland neighborhood of Shreveport, Louisiana, 22-year-old Robert Renter leans against a table inside a home called a Friendship House. Part residence and part community center, the Friendship House has come to mean a lot to Renter, who nervously finds his words to explain to visitors something so sentimental to him: "I am a young Black man in America, and five or six years ago, I wasn't exactly a model student."
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CHANNON LUCAS
The Mother Cabrini Health Foundation — a grantmaking organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of vulnerable New Yorkers — has awarded $470 million to more than 1,000 organizations and initiatives in its first four years. This was not an easy feat, and the team faced plenty of obstacles along the way. As a brand-new organization with zero infrastructure in 2018, the foundation quickly found itself responding to an unprecedented global health crisis. Amid the challenges and heightened needs of COVID-19, we rapidly focused our mission, built an organizational structure and put into operation ways to quickly respond to residents in need and their communities.
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SUSAN HUBER
The importance of collaboration has always been foundational to Ascension's health care work. The historic sponsoring organizations of Ascension were founded between 400 and 800 years ago. All have collaboration embedded in either their charisms or in their mission or value statements. So, it is no surprise that when Ascension Global Mission began in 2011 with seed capital from historic sponsors and Ascension, its vision was to "engage in international efforts to improve the health and living status for poor and vulnerable populations in low resource countries through 'collaborating' with local and global communities, including sponsoring congregations and other religious communities, to foster long-term, sustainable change." Collaboration was not just a good idea — it was an expectation.
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ROBIN ROENKER
At 6:45 a.m. on a recent day at the nonprofit Surgery on Sunday, an energetic team of volunteer nurses and medically certified Spanish-English interpreters buzzed about taking vitals, explaining procedures and ensuring patient consent forms had been completed correctly. Nearby, volunteer surgeons and anesthesiologists changed into scrubs and prepared for the busy morning ahead, which included two hernia repairs and two gall bladder removals, plus one tonsillectomy, one cornea repair and one retina repair.
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ANDREW KRUSE and SUSAN TIPPETT
For those negatively impacted by social determinants of health, overcoming the often complex barriers to meeting their health care and social service-related needs can be extremely challenging, but supportive navigation services can guide them to helpful resources.
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FEATURE
SALLY J. ALTMAN, MPH
For many of us, returning to our normal pre-COVID-19 lives is not yet a reality. This is especially true for the most vulnerable among us nationwide, as the pandemic has fallen heaviest on minority and marginalized communities. Although COVID hospitalizations and deaths have diminished and the unemployment rate has fallen, inflation and interest rates are soaring for the first time in decades. Furthermore, affordable housing is now in shorter supply.
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