As the United States mourns the death of its 39th President, so too it honors and carries forth his legacy. In President Jimmy Carter's farewell address to the nation when leaving office in 1981, he reminded us that every American has "a right and a duty to help shape the future course of the United States."
He continued, "Today, as people have become ever more doubtful of the ability of the government to deal with our problems, we are increasingly drawn to single-issue groups and special interest organizations to ensure that whatever else happens, our own personal views and our own private interests are protected. This is a disturbing factor in American political life. It tends to distort our purposes, because the national interest is not always the sum of all our single or special interests. We are all Americans together, and we must not forget that the common good is our common interest and our individual responsibility."
The Catholic Health Association was honored when President Carter contributed additional thoughts on the common good to a 2016 Health Progress issue on that topic. Throughout his lifetime, he championed the foundational importance of human rights, environmental sustainability and health care, including global health leadership to reduce cases of parasitic Guinea worm disease from about 3.5 million cases annually to just about a dozen in recent years. He knew that health is not found only in reducing illness, but in working for peaceful communities, affordable and safe housing and in a shared commitment to one another and the common good:
