BY: TERRY VAN SCHAIK
Sometimes a word just seems to be in the air.
You hear the word on the drive to work, a friend uses it at lunch, you catch
it again on the late night news. Such is the case with the word “transform” — used
in several articles in this issue of Health Progress. Most dramatically,
perhaps, the word appears in CHA's 1999-2002
Strategic Plan and Year Three Operations Plan. In this final year of the
current plan, CHA articulates and accepts a challenge for itself: to unite as
a ministry “to transform communities, public policy, and the delivery of health
care.” To learn more about the association's plan to leverage its collective
capacity to bring about transformational change, see the Strategic Plan.
The word transform and its derivatives rumble through this issue's special
section, “Negotiating the Health Care Market with Integrity,” which we thank
Ann Neale, PhD, for guest editing. Multiple authors identify conflicts that
arise in health care when markets and health care values collide. Articles such
as those by Judith Feder, PhD, and Roberto Dell'Oro, STD, identify the need
for transformational change in the health care system.
Jack Glaser, STD, and Brian Glaser, PhD, join special section authors in identifying
the need to transform the current U.S. health care system, which allows 39.3
million to live without access to care. The authors challenge Catholic health
care and particularly sponsors to recognize that, although laudable, direct
service to the poor is not enough. Only sweeping reform — transformation — of the
health care system will do.