ELCA Issues First Draft of Statement on Health, Health Care

CHICAGO (ELCA) -- "Health, Healing, and Health Care: First Draft of a Social Statement" is now available on the World Wide Web and will be available within weeks from Augsburg Fortress Publishers, the publishing house of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The document is the first draft of what could become an official policy of the ELCA in 2003. It is one step of a four-year study process.
The board of the ELCA Division for Church in Society (DCS) authorized distribution of the first draft when it met Oct. 18-20 in Baltimore. Each of the ELCA's 10,816 congregations, as well as pastors and lay leaders serving in other settings, will receive a single copy of the document by Dec. 31. A Spanish version will be available by the end of the year.
ELCA members are to offer their responses to the draft by Sept. 1, 2002, so they may inform the development of a proposal for the assembly. The draft includes a response form.
"Advances in public health practice and biomedical technology have brought improved health, cures for some diseases and longer lives for many people," says the introduction. "The pursuit of health also presents difficult issues to individuals, society, and the Church. For example, gains in biomedical science do not automatically translate to the kind of healing care or knowledge that people seek."
"As members of the ELCA, and as a corporate body, we support a health care system that embodies a full understanding of health, healing and illness; access to the system for everyone; understanding health and healing as both individual and social responsibilities; ongoing struggle with the moral dilemmas of the wise use of technology; and continuous examination of the roles and responsibilities of the church," says the draft statement.
"Being bold witnesses to the need for caring for the health and healing needs of all people is a fundamental mission of the church. We are called to be advocates in society for those individual and collective actions that promote health, prevent illness, and ensure care for those who suffer," says the draft.
The document is divided into six sections and a conclusion.
After a preface and introduction, the first section is "Health, Illness, and Healing in Biblical and Lutheran Theological Perspectives." It says Christians consider humans to be a combination of body, spirit, soul and community, so "health care and healing services should attend to the physical, mental, spiritual and communal dimensions of a person's well-being."
"Illness is an individual's experience of a diminished sense of health" in all of health's dimensions, says the draft. "Healing seeks to restore health. Healing is related to a restoration of the fullness of life and peace that God promises and that can be distinct from or more than cure," it says.
"Healing is also a gift which is intimately related to God's redemptive work," says the draft statement. "Like healing, God's salvation begins now and includes the whole person, both body and soul."
The draft's second section, "A Vision of Health Care," involves seven subheadings: health care as shared endeavor, health care system, provider-patient relationships, caregivers, technology, research and education. The subheading on a health care system includes a part on "A Comprehensive Health System," which addresses population-focused services and whole-patient care.
"Population-focused public health refers to those services taken on behalf of the entire community to prevent epidemics, limit threats to health, promote healthy behavior, reduce injuries, assist in recovery from disasters, and ensure that people have access to needed services," says the draft. It presents "whole-patient care" in segments on curing, other approaches to healing, healing without cure, palliative care -- which reduces symptoms and provides comfort -- and peaceful dying.
"We favor development of a health care system that has the explicit purpose of continuously promoting and improving the health of the people; reducing the impact and burden of illness, injury and disability; and promoting healing as its needs are occasioned by the lack of health, even when cure is not possible," says the draft statement, outlining "one image of what an integrated system could be."
That image of "a comprehensive health system is built upon prevention and is sustained by a continuous cycle of mutual support among individuals, families and caregivers," says the draft.
The third section is called "Access and Equity in Health Care." It makes several biblical references, saying, "At the center of Lutheran ethics is agape, a love that 'does no wrong to a neighbor' but seeks instead to use the 'world's goods' especially for the 'brother and sister in need.'"
"We therefore are responsible to promote the health and healing of our neighbors, as God intends these good gifts for all people. We may love people differently as needs require, but we love our neighbors through serving their needs, including and perhaps especially their health care needs," says the draft statement.
"Each person should have ready access to comprehensive, basic health care," it says. "Our Lutheran ministries of health care and other charitable organizations can supplement the current care system to attend to those often left out. This charity can never be sufficient, however, and we remain obligated to call out for justice."
"Individual Responsibilities" are addressed in the fourth section. "Health is not merely for living well, but for the broader purposes of worshiping God and serving God and neighbor. This principle should guide one's thinking and behavior in regard to one's own health," it says. One should work to prevent illness, but, when illness comes, one should seek health with the help of others, says the draft.
"We also have a responsibility to participate in the health care system in such a way that does not waste health care resources or diminish what is available to serve the basic health care needs of all persons," says the draft statement. "As good neighbors, each of us has opportunities to provide informal care (such as meals or transportation), prayer, and emotional support for one another and for all caregivers in our circle," it says.
The draft's fifth section, "Ethical Guidance," says Lutheran ethics and decision making are based on such concepts as "doing no harm," being good stewards of God's gifts and seeking justice in the distribution of health care resources.
"The Roles of the Church in Health Care" are outlined in the sixth section as they are played out in congregations, social ministry organizations and advocacy. "For the Church, a ministry of healing is not optional. It is an activity that expresses our faith in the power of God both to create and to save," says the draft.
"Advocacy within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is an expression of Christian witness on behalf of the neighbor, especially those living in poverty or illness," it says. "Continuing advocacy on health issues is one expression of the shared endeavor of health in the community and is based on existing social policy statements."
The draft statement has a one-paragraph conclusion: "It is important that we go forward, maintaining the tension between lifting up the centrality and importance of health and illness as human concerns for all people everywhere and resisting the temptation to encompass all of life and well-being under the concepts and obligations of health care. Within this tension we express gratitude for the gifts of lifeand health, and offer ourselves out of love and justice to seek health and healing for all people as children of God."
The document ends with implementing resolutions and endnotes.
An ELCA churchwide assembly must adopt a proposed social statement on health a