Catholic Health World - March 15, 2023

CommonSpirit to end partnership 3

Coordinating Ukraine relief 3 Benedictine Sisters’ new MPJP 7

Health systems align philanthropy, community benefit for more impact

By JULIE MINDA

When philanthropy and community benefit practitioners within a health system unite, they can increase their work’s efficiency, tap into new resources, draw on one another’s expertise and have greater impact in their communities.

Community benefit and philanthropy leaders at Avera Health, Providence St. Joseph Health and SSM Health say their systems are particularly intentional about marrying their philanthropic and community benefit efforts aimed at such priorities

as behavioral health, health equity and social determinants of health.

“We can have a tremendous impact on the people we serve … when we are all pushing in the same direction,” says Sandy Koller, chief philanthropy officer of SSM Health.

Centralization

Philanthropy teams raise funds from individuals and organizations and have historically been more focused on capital projects, medical equipment purchases

Continued on 5

CHRISTUS Santa Rosa partners with nonprofit to check that hearts of teenagers are healthy

By LISA EISENHAUER

After Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest during the “Monday Night Football” game Jan. 2, the phone at AugustHeart started ringing.

AugustHeart provides free electrocardiograms for middle- and high school-aged students at events it stages in and around San Antonio. Students and parents who were shocked into action by the televised collapse of a 24-year-old professional athlete wanted to take advantage of the San Antonio-based nonprofit’s next screening to check for undetected heart conditions.

a memory box at Camp GLOW, a grief support day camp in Waunakee, Wisconsin. Attendance is free thanks to the support of donors to the SSM Health at Home Foundation of Wisconsin. GLOW stands for Giving Loved Ones Wings.

Sweet home Atlanta

In the shadow of Atlanta skyscrapers, Sweet Auburn is a historic cradle of the nonviolent civil rights movement. Rev. Dr. Marin Luther King Jr. was born, preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church, and is buried in the urban neighborhood. Here, his widow Coretta Scott King leads a celebratory 1995 march down Auburn Avenue. Trinity Health and its members Saint Joseph Health System and Mercy Care are investing in affordable housing and expanding health care access in the neighborhood.

Story on PAGE 8

Trauma recovery center helps patients overcome impacts of violence

By LISA EISENHAUER

When the staff of the Mercy Health — Toledo Trauma Recovery Center in Ohio began working with a 36-year-old man and his 4-year-old son last August, the pair were homeless. The father was the victim of domestic violence. He had suffered a history of family violence before that.

The center provided counseling and other support for the man and boy. The pair had moved into a home in January, but the center paid to relocate them to a safer one, away from the person who had physically assaulted the father for years.

OraLee Macklenar, the center’s supervisor, says the father’s life has stabilized. He is working full time and providing for his son. “He and his child are doing better emotionally, and he is focusing on

©1995, Kevin C. Rose

“

We can have a tremendous impact on the people we serve … when we are all pushing in the same direction.”

— Sandy Koller

A teenager undergoes an electrocardiogram during a screening event in January at CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital — Alamo Heights in San Antonio. The screening was a collaboration between CHRISTUS Santa Rosa and AugustHeart, a nonprofit that provides the heart tests without charge to teenagers. At this event, 167 teenagers underwent testing.

A volunteer helps a camper decorate

Trauma recovery center

From page 1 being a good father and is striving to break the cycle of violence for his son and the next generation,” Macklenar says.

The father and child are among about 2,000 crime victims and their families who the center based at Mercy Health — St. Vincent Medical Center has assisted since its founding in 2019. The services of its sevenmember team of licensed social workers, clinical counselors and a certified victim’s advocate come at no charge to clients who are victims or impacted by crime. The cost is covered by federal Victims of Crime Act funding via a grant administered by the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and by support from the Mercy Health Foundation.

Mercy Health is part of the Bon Secours Mercy Health system, based in Cincinnati.

Healing body, mind and spirit

Dr. John Leskovan, trauma medical director at Mercy Health — St. Vincent Medical Center, was among those who applied for the state funding that helped establish the trauma recovery center. The hospital is a Level I trauma center and a Level 2 pediatric trauma center and has specialists on staff to treat life-threatening and other serious injuries from accidents, violence and disasters.

Leskovan says he saw that while the 3,000 or so trauma victims coming to the hospital every year were getting solid medical care, many of them also needed mental health care to process their traumatic experiences. That’s why he and some of his colleagues quickly responded when they saw an email about the state administered grants to support recovery services for crime victims.

Their hope, Leskovan says, was to lock down funding for interventions that would help crime victims move past the trauma and avoid complications of post-traumatic stress such as crippling anxiety and depression that can impact health and well-being.

“We thought, ‘What better way to provide a prevention program than to help the survivors of violent crime?’” he says. The trauma recovery center also treats family members impacted by the injury to a loved one.

HOW COMMON IS TRAUMA?

Trauma occurs when a person is overwhelmed by events or circumstances and responds with intense fear, horror and helplessness.

90%

MORE THAN

Trauma is a risk factor in nearly all behavioral health and substance use disorders.

Source: National Council for Mental Wellbeing

Health Services Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, calls the impact of trauma “a behavioral health concern.” The agency notes that research has linked traumatic experiences, especially adverse childhood experiences, to chronic disease, mental and behavioral health issues and risky behaviors including substance abuse.

“Because these behavioral health concerns can present challenges in relationships, careers, and other aspects of life, it is important to understand the nature and impact of trauma, and to explore healing,” the agency says.

Outreach to the marginalized

During her 20-plus years as a therapist, Macklenar has specialized in the treatment of people with anxiety, trauma and substance use disorders. Most of her work has been with adults. Other therapists on the center’s staff specialize in treating children.

Not all of the state’s trauma recovery centers provide services to children. Macklenar says she and the other founders of Mercy Health — Toledo Trauma Recovery Center wanted it to offer therapy for children. “We know that the need is there and there’s just no way we could not address that population,” she adds.

The center is part of the National Alliance of Trauma Recovery Centers, which has 44 member programs in 10 states. The programs are based on a model developed at the University of California San Francisco in 2001. The goal of the outreach model is to provide therapy, care coordination and advocacy services for survivors of violence who are in underserved communities and falling through the cracks of traditional victim services.

Leskovan says he refers patients to the trauma recovery center every day. Not all of them are crime victims. Since its founding, the center has branched out to offer billable inpatient and outpatient care to people who have been traumatized by accidents, and to intensive care patients treated at the medical center who may feel depressed and anxious as they adapt to diminished capacity related to critical illness. The trauma recovery center’s staff does bedside assessments of patients whose injuries or serious illnesses have prompted medical staffers to suspect they might benefit from trauma therapy.

The Substance Abuse and Mental

33%

of youths exposed to community violence will experience post-traumatic stress disorder

SECONDS

Nearly all children who witness a parent’s murder or sexual assault will develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

case management services.

The grant also covers an education program for kids ages 11-17 about potentially risky behavior, specifically in the area of human trafficking prevention. The center’s staff underwent training on an anti-trafficking curriculum developed by the state. They are teaching the curriculum at the clinic and in a school in a Toledo neighborhood, which has a high number of children in the legal system, exposed to family violence or in foster care.

The curriculum is typically taught over the course of about five days. Its goal is to provide safety, stabilization and engagement for the students. The instructors gather information from the kids at the start about their attitude toward unsafe behaviors — such as alcohol and other drug use — and score them for risk.

“Once they’re trained, we do another test and find out that their score is significantly improved because they’ve now been educated and they are less likely to engage in those risky behaviors that could potentially lead them into becoming a humantrafficking victim,” Macklenar says.

Restoration, healing

Human trafficking victims are among those that Macklenar and her team provide free services to at the trauma recovery center. Others are victims of gunshots, domestic violence, stalking and various forms of physical and emotional brutality. Most of the patients are women and children traumatized by violence. Macklenar says the recovery center offers its services as long as it takes patients “to get on the other side of trauma.” Some of the patients have been treated for as long as a year.

One patient was referred by the county prosecutor’s office after being hospitalized several times because of assaults by her domestic partner. Macklenar says the wom-

Recovery center offers range of services

Mercy Health — Toledo Trauma Recovery Center is one of eight such centers in Ohio and the only one in the northwestern part of the state. It has served people from as far away as Dayton, about 150 miles south. The assistance the center offers includes:

Clinical case management.

Trauma-focused counseling that includes the use of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive processing therapy. Legal and court advocacy, such as assisting with filing for victims of crime compensation.

Safety planning.

Screening for alcohol and drug abuse issues and assistance with referrals for additional recovery services.

Group therapy for grief, loss and trauma.

Bedside support for those who are hospitalized.

Crime victims get referrals to the center from law enforcement, community agencies and clinicians at Mercy Health — St. Vincent Medical Center, where the center has offices and therapy rooms on the second floor.

an’s attacker was notorious for being able to locate her after her attempts to leave him.

At the time of her referral, the woman was pregnant. The temporary shelter where she had been living had discharged her to the street after 30 days. She was staying in a hotel rather than with family because her attacker had been able to locate her relatives’ homes.

The trauma recovery center first helped the woman find safe temporary shelter and began supportive psychotherapy for her trauma. Working with an FBI victim’s advocate, the center recently was able to help the woman enroll in a program that is providing recovery support and housing for the woman and her infant for a year.

“She will be working with a program that is building her resources and stability so that when she leaves, she will be able to successfully take care of herself and her child,” Macklenar says.

On her final visit to the trauma recovery center, the woman told the team they had helped her turn her life around.

Macklenar says: “We feel blessed and honored to do this work to see victims find restoration and healing.”

leisenhauer@chausa.org

Vice President Communications and Marketing Brian P. Reardon

Macklenar participates in monthly virtual gatherings convened by the alliance to talk about services and share ideas.

The Toledo center’s staff hosts conferences to teach law enforcement and other professionals about the impact of trauma and how best to approach and assist victims.

‘Prevention piece’

Last year, the trauma recovery center added what Macklenar calls a “prevention piece” to its services. The center received a $145,000 state grant that allows her team to offer proactive victimization prevention to at-risk youth through the use of psychosocial support groups, psychotherapy, and

Editor Judith VandeWater jvandewater@chausa.org

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Associate Editor Julie Minda jminda@chausa.org

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Associate Editor Lisa Eisenhauer leisenhauer@chausa.org

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Graphic Design Norma Klingsick Advertising ads@chausa.org

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In the U.S., a woman is beaten every of clients in public behavioral health have experienced trauma

15

A forcible rape occurs every 6 MINUTES

A therapy room at the Mercy Health – Toledo Trauma Recovery Center is furnished for sessions with adults and children. The recovery center provides free counseling and advocacy services to help people in Northwest Ohio who have been impacted by crime reach stability and well-being.

CommonSpirit to halt management agreement in Colorado and acquire Utah hospital system

Centura Health no longer will function as the joint management company for hospitals owned by CommonSpirit and AdventHealth in Colorado and Kansas. Separately, CommonSpirit and Centura Health are in talks for CommonSpirit to acquire a network of health care facilities in Utah from Steward Health Care.

Catholic Health Initiatives, one of the predecessors of CommonSpirit Health, joined AdventHealth in 1996 in forming Centura Health as a management company. When CommonSpirit and AdventHealth discontinue the management agreement governing 20 hospitals, AdventHealth will operate and manage the five Adventist hospitals and their affiliated clinics in Colorado and CommonSpirit will operate and manage its 15 hospitals and affiliated clinics in Colorado and Western Kansas.

CommonSpirit, AdventHealth and Centura said in a Feb. 14 press release that while the 27-year partnership had been strong and fruitful, it had reached its natu-

Upcoming Events

from The Catholic Health Association

Global Health Networking Zoom Call

May 3 | 1 – 2 p.m. ET

Mission in Long-Term Care Networking Zoom Call

June 7 | 1 – 2 p.m. ET

Assembly 2023 (Virtual)

June 12-13

Diversity & Disparities Networking Zoom Call

June 29 | 1-2 p.m. ET

Faith Community Nurse Networking Zoom Call

July 25 | 1-2 p.m. ET

Mission in Long-Term Care Networking Zoom Call

Sept. 6| 1-2 p.m. ET

Deans of Catholic Colleges of Nursing Networking Zoom Call

Oct. 3 | 1 – 2 p.m. ET

United Against Human Trafficking Networking Zoom Call Oct. 4 | 11 a.m. - Noon ET

FACILITIES INVOLVED IN COMMONSPIRIT AND STEWARD DEAL

said the three organizations had signed an asset purchase agreement that would have CommonSpirit acquiring Steward’s Utah health care facilities. This includes five hospitals, more than 35 medical group clinics and additional facilities.

Neither CommonSpirit nor Centura currently have a presence in Utah.

The organizations expect to finalize the transaction later this year, pending regulatory approvals. At that point, Steward’s Utah facilities will be wholly owned and sponsored by CommonSpirit and managed by Centura. Steward is a for-profit, secular health system.

With the ownership transition, the Utah facilities will eventually become nonprofit Catholic hospitals.

ral end point.

The organizations said in the release that CommonSpirit and AdventHealth agree that “they can best serve their communities and health care ministries without a partnership — with each organization directly managing their respective care sites

As Ukraine war enters second year, Catholic relief effort digs in

By LISA EISENHAUER

In the year since Russia invaded, Catholic relief groups have swept into Ukraine to provide aid — housing, meals, medical care and psychosocial support — to the war’s victims there and wherever they’ve taken refuge, all the while assisting people in crises elsewhere around the globe.

Bruce Compton, CHA’s senior director of global health, hosted a networking call with several representatives of the relief groups on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Russia’s first strike on Feb. 24, 2022.

“We come together today as CHA members and their partners who have joined with people of faith and goodwill from across the world to provide resources for the people of Ukraine and support for those who are caring for the people of Ukraine and for the refugees in those countries surrounding Ukraine,” Compton said.

He referenced the appeal made a day earlier by Pope Francis for a cease-fire and peace negotiations to end the conflict. The pope called the war “absurd and cruel.” The United Nations says the fighting has killed at least 8,000 civilians and injured more than 13,000. The combat also has left 18 million people in “dire need of humanitarian assistance” and displaced 14 million Ukrainians from their homes, the U.N. says.

Coordinated response

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CHA is part of Catholic Response for Ukraine, a self-described working group of “major global Catholic-inspired humanitarian organizations” convened at the request of the Vatican. Msgr. Robert J. Vitillo, secretary general of the International Catholic Migration Commission, leads Catholic Response for Ukraine and gave a rundown of the coordinated efforts of its member groups during the networking call.

He said the two Ukraine-based Caritas groups have provided food and daily necessities to 1.7 million people, shelter to 600,000, medical and psychological support to 190,000, and cash assistance to 106,000. The Order of Malta has supplied

which comprise Centura Health.”

The organizations are not providing additional details at this time.

Utah acquisition

In a Feb. 15 press release, CommonSpirit, Steward Health Care and Centura

Marvin O’Quinn, CommonSpirit president and chief operating officer, said in the Feb. 15 release that CommonSpirit’s expansion into Utah “will further support our strategic vision to create an integrated continuum of care in communities where we have a presence.”

480,000 meals and 19,000 beds in shelters and provided mental health care to 31,000 people and other psychological support to 18,500 people. It has trained 13,175 people in first aid.

Msgr. Vitillo said the need for aid in Ukraine will be long term, regardless of when the combat ends. He noted that he had learned over the summer that Ukraine has the world’s largest minefield — an area about the size of Virginia, Maryland and Connecticut combined. The bombs are being planted by both sides in the war, according to the nonprofit Human Rights Watch.

“It will take years to clear those landmines, and those of us who worked in Southeast Asia know that some of them never get found and continue to do damage to people,” Msgr. Vitillo said.

One of the ways that Catholic health systems have helped Ukraine, he said, has been by providing prosthetics for amputees. He said he hopes to see that aid expand and also is encouraging donations of ambulances.

Sending only what’s requested

By early April, a 40-foot shipping container of medicine and medical equipment procured by Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach and the Catholic Medical Mission Board is due to arrive in Ukraine. The Knights of Columbus is arranging the shipment.

Erica Smith, president and executive director of Hospital Sisters Mission Outreach, said during the call that her organization isn’t sending any supplies into Ukraine until the goods are requested. Sending unrequested supplies, she noted, can lead to what she called “the second disaster.”

“Our good intentions can unfortunately go awry for people who are already in the

middle of a crisis trying to store and distribute and maintain and use medical supplies and equipment safely and appropriately,” Smith said.

Bill O’Keefe, executive vice president for mission and mobilization at Catholic Relief Services, said his organization is working with Caritas groups to provide humanitarian support at 168 sites in Ukraine. The support includes operating reception centers and field kitchens for displaced residents and providing shelter and counseling and other care to address psychosocial needs.

“I wish American Catholics could fully grasp what all of us have an opportunity to see, which is just how amazing the global Catholic Church’s response is in so many different ways,” O’Keefe said.

Crises elsewhere

He noted that the outpouring of assistance has come as his organization and other relief groups have continued their commitments to people in other troubled zones such as the West Bank, Yemen and the Sahel Region of West Africa.

The ongoing humanitarian crises in those places have been exacerbated by the fighting in Ukraine, O’Keefe said, because many of the food shipments those regions rely on originate in Ukraine and Russia and have been interrupted.

Brian Corbin, executive vice president of Catholic Charities USA, discussed how his organization is assisting Ukrainian refugees who are resettling at least temporarily in the United States.

Msgr. Vitillo pointed out that, in line with the wishes of the Vatican, many of the organizations are working as partners rather than operating on parallel tracks. “I think the more we can do together, the better,” he said.

Ukrainians displaced by the Russian invasion find shelter in a dorm set up by Catholic relief groups in Ukraine. In the first year of the war, Catholic nonprofits have assisted tens of thousands of victims with housing, medical care, food, transportation, psychosocial support and more.

Steward Health Care hospitals CommonSpirit Health hospitals + +

Nancy McNally/International Catholic Migration Commission

CommonSpirit Health has 15 hospitals in Colorado and Western Kansas that are managed by Centura Health. CommonSpirit is in talks to acquire health care facilities in Utah from Steward Health Care.

Journey with Jesus to the Cross

A Video Reflection Series for Lent

CHA is pleased to offer a special series of video reflections for use in your next team huddle, department meeting, or personal reflection. Visit chausa.org/lent or scan the QR code to access the video reflection series and a meaningful conversation with artist William Frank.

Philanthropy and community benefit

From page 1

and other initiatives deemed important for advancing patient care rather than improving population health. Generally speaking, community benefit teams use operating revenue and external grants to address population health and social determinants of health in marginalized neighborhoods and among vulnerable populations. Community benefit programs are commonly undertaken as partnerships with other nonprofits.

In the past, systems and their facilities often pursued philanthropy and community benefit work on separate tracks. But increasingly, as many national ministry systems centralize functions to take advantage of efficiencies and collective expertise, silos are breaking down and a top-down/ bottom-up flow of ideas is encouraged.

Philanthropic/community benefit twinning is becoming more the norm. At Avera, Providence and SSM Health, system-level experts in philanthropy and community benefit aim to provide strategic guidance and support to their counterparts at the local level. This includes encouraging them to collaborate across divisions as they pursue their systems’ strategic priorities while also attending to needs that are specific to their markets.

Doing the most good

Dzenan Berberovic, Avera’s chief philanthropy officer, says Avera’s 37 hospitals across the Great Plains still retain agency and decision-making power, including when it comes to their philanthropy work and they provide input when it comes to decisions around their community benefit work. There’s increased focus systemwide on ensuring that all the facilities do is very directly connected with Avera’s strategic plan. Top needs as defined in the strategic plan are improving access to medical and behavioral health care, affordable housing, transportation, education and healthy food.

“When efforts are aligned … we can do our work more effectively,” says Berberovic.

Lindsey Meyers, Avera vice president of public relations, adds that partnering with the philanthropy division exposes the community partnerships team to different perspectives. This intelligence is invaluable, she says, particularly when the donor community’s priorities for such worthy causes as improving mental health care access, advancing health equity and improving population health dovetail with a community benefit team’s determination of unmet community needs.

Meyers notes that health systems are under great financial strain now and it is

imperative that they spend community benefit money, grants and gifts to maximum effect. Having all divisions work together on the same priorities helps ensure this.

Regional structure

When Dr. Alexander Garza moved from chief medical officer of SSM Health to the system’s chief community health officer about 2 ½ years ago he set about deepening the system’s focus on social determinants of health, equity and social justice and supporting its pivot to population health and value-based delivery.

Lately, Garza has been ensuring that he and staff engage in community health programming at the regional level. Food access, housing and community economic empowerment have been at the top of the agenda.

Community health teams’ research and insights have led to greater understanding of what is driving the biggest concerns that vulnerable community members have, what the disparities are, and what the inequities are, says Garza.

Koller says the community health team has the intelligence and data on the major disparities in the communities that SSM Health’s 23 Midwestern hospitals serve, and that is the type of information donors want so they can ensure their dollars are going toward the communities’ top needs. She says, “The community health team are the subject matter experts, they have the experience, and they know through research what the

Philanthropy, community benefit working together to address behavioral health, social determinants, disparity

Ministry systems increasingly are ensuring that their philanthropy and community benefit work is aligned and directed toward top strategic goals. A sampling of the programming that these divisions are partnering on at three Catholic health systems includes:

Avera Health

Behavioral health: Community health needs assessments have surfaced behavioral health as a pressing concern for the Great Plains communities where Avera operates. Avera’s community partnership and philanthropy divisions have prioritized behavioral health. The community partnership group has joined with nonprofits to educate community members on mental health and to conduct suicide prevention campaigns. And the philanthropy division has raised funds to expand Avera’s behavioral health hospital in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and to fund its patient support programs. This includes a grassroots marketing campaign to prevent deaths by suicide.

Providence St. Joseph Health

Workforce development: Philanthropy and community benefit teams are both undertaking efforts to build up the pipeline of workers. One community benefit program that has received philanthropic support exposes students from minority communities to career opportunities in health care. Philanthropists also have helped fund nursing scholarships.

Behavioral health: Community benefit and philanthropy teams have worked together to support trauma informed health care training, mental health first aid courses and substance misuse care navigation in Providence markets.

greatest needs are. They have the pulse.” With information from that group, “we can help donors make the greatest impact. And donors expect that of us — that we understand how to make the greatest impact.”

Koller adds that SSM Health has seen that donors want their contributions to make a difference. Contributions to improve behavioral health, advance health equity and address food insecurity fit that bill.

Convergence

Kenya Beckmann is chief philanthropy officer of the south division of Providence, which covers the California facilities within the 52-hospital system. She says to encourage greater synergy between the community benefit and philanthropy teams, Providence in California has organized both of those functions in the same reporting chain. In her newly created position for Providence’s southern region, Beckmann oversees philanthropy and community

SSM Health

Community economic empowerment: Philanthropy and community benefit teams have partnered on programs to promote hiring from disadvantaged communities in SSM Health’s service areas. Food insecurity: Programming includes screenings that surface and seek to address food insecurity concerns among patients, partnerships with local pantries and initiatives to ensure at-risk pregnant women have sufficient nutrition.

health investment, which is Providence’s community benefit division. Health equity also falls within her reporting chain.

Beckmann says, “The community has pushed us to articulate ourselves differently, with fewer silos. (Donors and community partnering agencies) wanted us to have a coherent strategy that was clearly working toward the common good” — and that is what Providence wanted as well, she says. Ensuring community benefit and philanthropy are in sync with one another furthers this goal.

She says health care is in an era of scarcity, and “philanthropy can change the DNA of an organization” in lean times. Philanthropy can give organizations the funds they need to take necessary risks.

Beckmann says she “loves that philanthropy and community benefit are coming together more. The community’s fate is bound with ours and we want to be trusted partners” in addressing what’s important to community members. Convergence helps achieve this, she says.

jminda@chausa.org

Cancer care is one of the many priority areas that Providence St. Joseph Health’s philanthropy and community benefit teams are addressing in tandem. Before the pandemic, one way a Providence hospital philanthropy team raised money for complimentary cancer wellness programming was through a fashion show benefit featuring cancer patients as models.

Berberovic

Meyers

Garza

Beckmann

Koller

Colleagues at SSM Health DePaul Hospital — St. Louis box up items to restock a community food pantry in November. SSM Health’s community benefit and philanthropy teams work in partnership to address food insecurity.

AugustHeart

From page 1

By coincidence, the organization in its first partnership with the CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Health System had a screening event planned three weeks later on the campus of CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital — Alamo Heights. The event was open to anyone age 13-18 in the community who preregistered. Over the course of about two hours 167 teenagers got screened.

The tests pointed to potential cardiac issues in four teens, who were referred to pediatric cardiologists. “Thanks to our wonderful doctors and our techs and volunteers, we were able to possibly save four lives,” says Cathy Klumpp, executive director of AugustHeart.

Klumpp points out that heart conditions among the young are often undetected when those afflicted are asymptomatic or their symptoms are so mild they are ignored. “You don’t even know,” she says. “It happens without warning.”

The cause of Hamlin’s cardiac arrest remains unclear. He is recovering. Still, Klumpp and Jay Young, director of sports medicine for CHRISTUS Santa Rosa, both say the NFL player’s collapse, which was witnessed by millions of viewers, has drawn attention to the risk of undetected heart conditions, particularly for athletes. They think it prompted the large turnout for the screening event Jan. 27.

“We were fortunate in an unfortunate way in that our first screening took place just weeks after the heart attack that occurred in Damar Hamlin,” Young says. “There was this awareness about heart issues at that point.”

Young is helping grow the partnership between AugustHeart and CHRISTUS Santa Rosa, part of Irving, Texas-based CHRISTUS Health. The AugustHeart screening event at the CHRISTUS facility Jan. 27 was followed by another Feb. 23.

Grief spurs action

AugustHeart was founded in 2011 by Doré Koontz and Bart Koontz, who lost their 18-year-old son, August, to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic heart condition that causes a thickening of the heart muscle. The condition can make it harder for the heart to pump blood. The Mayo Clinic says the disease often goes undiagnosed because many people with the disease have few, if any, outward symptoms.

August Koontz was an athlete and had been through many routine sports physicals, none of which detected his heart condition before he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest in his sleep. His parents believe their son’s heart condition would have been caught if he’d undergone an electrocardiogram, Klumpp says.

AugustHeart gets its funding from grants, donations and fundraising events. Since its founding, the nonprofit has provided 62,155 screenings. It claims 311 potential lives saved based on the number of athletes whose previously unknown heart abnormalities were detected in the testing. In 2022, it logged 7,864 screenings and 57 referrals. Of those who got screenings, Klumpp says 47% were in low-income families.

Parents are required to sign a waiver in order for their child or teen to undergo an electrocardiogram. The test, which registers electric signals in the heart, takes about 20 minutes. If it points to a potential heart issue, the teens undergo an echocardiogram at the event site, which shows blood flow through the heart and heart valves.

AugustHeart provides the testing equipment and pays the technicians who administer the tests. The rest of the event staff are volunteers. The tests are read by cardiologists either onsite or remotely, depending on whether doctors are available to volunteer their time on the day of the screenings.

CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital — Alamo Heights donated the use of space in its orthopedic offices for the screenings. Hospital President Sherry Fraser says several of the two dozen or so volunteers at the event in January were hospital staff who had previously volunteered at AugustHeart community screenings. At some events, including the one in January, cardiologists are among the volunteers. They read test results and answer questions.

Fraser says the nonprofit’s mission aligns well with that of CHRISTUS Health.

“Our mission is to extend the healing ministry of Jesus Christ,” she says. “Anytime that we can touch the life of a child or anyone else, that fulfills our mission.”

To screen or not to screen

The Mayo Clinic says while sudden cardiac arrest is the leading cause of death in young athletes, it remains rare. “Estimates vary, but some reports suggest that about 1 in 50,000 to 1 in 80,000 young athletes die of sudden cardiac death each year,” the clinic’s website says. “For comparison, the incidence of sudden cardiac arrest in the general population is about 1 in 1,000 people yearly.”

The stance of AugustHeart, as stated

on its website, is that “a physical exam is not enough” to detect heart problems in athletes. For its part, the American Heart Association recommends a 14-point screening for young athletes that includes a personal and family medical history and physical exam. Its recommendations do not include routine administration of electrocardiograms.

In an assessment of electrocardiogram as a screening tool for young people age 12 to 25 published in the journal Circulation in 2014, the association and the American College of Cardiology cite concerns over false positive and false negative results and the health care resources that would be consumed by such regular screenings as reasons for not recommending the test’s widespread use.

A study published in 2019 in the Journal of the American Heart Association called on the association to reconsider its advice. The researchers concluded that the association’s screening protocol performs poorly compared with electrocardiogram for flagging conditions associated with a risk for sudden cardiac death in high school athletes.

“Recommendations for the routine use of the AHA 14-point evaluation or similar history-based questionnaires as the principal tool for preparticipation cardiovascular screening of young athletes should be reevaluated,” the assessment says.

Cody’s Law

In Texas, a law enacted in 2019 requires schools to tell the parents of student athletes about the risk of sudden cardiac arrest and about electrocardiogram testing. That measure, known as “Cody’s Law,” is named in honor of Cody Stephens, another 18-year-old student athlete who died in his sleep of sudden cardiac arrest. The law doesn’t require schools to pay for or arrange an electrocardiogram if one is requested, but Young says some schools do.

Young previously was head athletic trainer at John Marshall High School, a school in suburban San Antonio with about 2,700 students. That school included electrocardiograms as part of its preparticipation physicals for sports.

Young considers the tests “incredibly important” for the safety of young athletes. “There’s just so many issues that can go undetected,” he says.

The orthopedic group affiliated with CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital — Alamo Heights will be providing free sports physicals later this year at events at schools in the San Antonio region. Young says the doctors plan to partner with AugustHeart to include electrocardiograms in those physicals. “We’re hoping for it to be a long-term partnership,” he says.

leisenhauer@chausa.org

Vatican approves Benedictine Sisters’ transition to public juridic person sponsorship

On July 1, the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery will transition sponsorship of their ministries from a sponsor council model to a ministerial public juridic person model. The new body will be called Duluth Benedictine Ministries and will be based at St. Scholastica Monastery in Duluth, Minnesota.

The Vatican approved the sponsorship change Dec. 8. Sr. Beverly Raway, OSB, said in a Jan. 31 press announcement that the member monastery — the community does not refer to itself as a congregation — is adopting the new model to allow for laity to participate more fully in sponsorship governance.

There is a declining number of sisters available to oversee the monastery’s sponsored ministries and facilities. She said the transition “will ensure our ministries that serve thousands of people each year will adhere to Catholic identity and Benedictine charisms well into the future.” Sr. Raway is prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery, which currently has 45 sisters and two sisters from overseas who are living at the monastery as they study at the College of St. Scholastica, which the sisters sponsor.

Staying power, adaptation

The monastery traces its Benedictine tradition back more than 1,500 years, and its

U.S. works back more than 170 years. Three Bavarian Benedictine Sisters emigrated to the U.S. in the 1800s and began growing the order and establishing ministries in Penn-

A TI ME TOCONNE

sylvania and then Minnesota. In 1892, 32 Benedictine Sisters established the monastery in Duluth. In the ensuing 131 years, they’ve built up a ministry that includes the Duluth-based Benedictine eldercare system; Duluth’s College of St. Scholastica; the Catholic facilities of the Essentia Health system; Shakopee, Minnesota-based St. Francis Regional Medical Center; and Cottonwood, Idaho-based St. Mary’s Health.

In 2010, the Benedictine Sisters began discussions on how best to ensure their ministries could continue to grow and thrive once sufficient numbers of sisters were no longer available to provide leadership and direction under the traditional sponsor model that exclusively had sisters in sponsorship roles, Sr. Raway explained in the announcement.

In 2014, the Benedictine Sisters’ governing body, which is called the monastic council, approved a sponsorship form for their sponsored works that was a variation on the traditional model. That sponsor council model, which went into effect in 2017, included both lay and sister voting members as well as ex-officio, nonvoting members from the leadership of the Benedictine Sisters’ sponsored ministries. The monastic council approved members who served on that sponsor council.

The sponsor council has been an advisory group but it also has had some reserved

power functions. Consisting of five sisters and four lay members, it was responsible for communicating with the leadership of the sisters’ sponsored ministries.

The monastery decided in 2018 to pursue a shift to the ministerial public juridic person model of sponsorship for its health care and educational works.

Sr. Raway said the sponsor council “did the major work of developing the MPJP model with canonical and legal consultation, and commissioning and approving the work of developing a formation program” for sponsors and ministry executives. She acknowledged with gratitude the support of Bishop Daniel Felton of the Diocese of Duluth.

The MPJP formally establishes the structured relationship through which laity can join vowed religious in governing, directing and influencing a ministry of the Catholic Church, according to information from the Benedictine Sisters.

Sr. Raway said with the July change to the MPJP, the role of the canonical stewards is expanding. Duluth Benedictine Ministries will become “the official canonical sponsor and will be accountable to the Vatican. (Sponsors) will take on the major responsibility for maintaining Catholicity of the sponsored ministries, formation of leadership in the Benedictine charism and governance oversight. Reserved power requests will be directed to this body.”

The five sisters and four laity who are voting sponsor council members are the inaugural members of Duluth Benedictine Ministries.

The MPJP’s statutes allow for between five and 15 people to be members of the sponsor body, with the majority being Benedictine Sisters. Lay members must be practicing Catholics. Each member can serve up to three successive three-year terms. Term expirations will be staggered. As Catholic Health World went to press, the MPJP chair and officers were to be selected at a March meeting.

The monastery plans to hire an executive director, a director of mission integration and formation and an executive administrative assistant to support the MPJP.

Plans call for an MPJP member or a representative selected by that sponsor body to hold at least one seat on each of the five boards governing Duluth Benedictine Ministries sponsored education and health care organizations.

ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES

Providence St. Joseph Health has made these changes: Dr. Cara Beatty to Providence clinical network chief executive for Eastern Washington and Montana. Sarah Skeel to chief administrative officer of Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage.

GRANT

Providence St. Joseph has received $1.3 million to help fund permanent supportive housing and recuperative care units at a housing complex in Rohnert Park in Sonoma County, California. The funding was part of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package that passed Congress in December 2022. Named the Providence Rohnert Park House, the building will include 76 permanent supportive housing units for seniors aged 55-plus who have a documented history of long-term homelessness and incomes at or below 30% of the area’s median income. The building also will have six recuperative care units, where residents will have access to wrap-around supportive services that address their health and housing needs.

In June, Sr. Beverly Raway, OSB, prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery, traveled two hours from the monastery in Duluth, Minnesota, to the nearest DHL postal services location in North Branch, Minnesota, to mail the monastery’s petition for approval of a sponsorship change. Here, at DHL, Sr. Raway checks the receipt for the parcel shipment to the Vatican.

Skeel

In historic Black neighborhood, Saint Joseph’s expands access to health care, housing

By JULIE MINDA

Sweet Auburn, an Atlanta neighborhood thick with civil rights history and famous as the birthplace of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has had its financial ups and downs through the decades. Recent boom times have not benefited all citizens in equal measure.

Mercy Care opened a federally qualified health center in the neighborhood 20 years ago to provide health services to families who are uninsured or struggling economically. Mercy Care is a member of Atlanta’s Saint Joseph’s Health System and Trinity Health.

The clinic operates Atlanta’s only health care for the homeless program. Half of its patients are homeless. About 60% are uninsured; some 30% have Medicaid coverage; approximately 5% have Medicare insurance; and around 8% have private insurance. Roughly three out of four of the clinic’s patients have incomes that fall below the federal poverty line.

Known as a mecca for Black professionals, the Atlanta region’s business cachet grew and its population exploded in the past 20 years. Sweet Auburn was among urban neighborhoods that began to gentrify. As housing and land prices spiraled up, long-time residents got pushed out. Most clinic staff commute more than 20 miles from the suburbs because they too have been priced out of Sweet Auburn.

To address housing affordability and instability while also expanding health care access and services, the clinic’s parent Saint Joseph’s Health System has been leading efforts to turn the clinic’s property into a mixed-use development with expanded health services and two affordable housing apartment buildings. The housing will include a mix of near-market-rate and subsidized units, including permanent supportive housing and transitional housing for patients.

Mercy Care opened a 36,000-squarefoot addition to its clinic last year. The campus is just a block from a public transit station.

“Having health services and housing in proximity to each other can solve for many issues that prevent people from making health care a priority,” says Kathryn Lawler, chief executive of Saint Joseph’s Health System and Mercy Care. “We know what impact social needs, including housing, can have on health. And health systems have an obligation to care for the community. To do that, we need to reimagine the health care model and focus on what makes people healthy.”

Lawler adds that systemic racism long has deprived people of color, and particularly lowincome Black people in Southern states, of access to adequate housing. She says the lack of safe housing has a direct impact on health.

Gentrification

Tom Andrews, who retired last May as chief executive of Saint Joseph’s, came up with the idea and got the ball rolling for the mixed-use campus. Its name, McAuley Park, honors Catherine McAuley, the foundress of the Sisters of Mercy. The congregation started Saint Joseph’s.

Andrews says Saint Joseph’s took the lead in master planning for the housing development. Saint Joseph’s identified key funding sources for the housing development, selected the design team, and courted potential participants and supporters including the city of Atlanta and the Sweet Auburn community.

In 2016 Saint Joseph’s purchased sufficient land adjacent to the Mercy Care clinic

Jump

Partners and financing arrangements for McAuley Park’s family housing complex

Nearly a dozen organizations are participating in the financing stack for the $50.5 million family housing complex at McAuley Station. McAuley Station is the affordable housing component of the McAuley Park health care-housing development in Atlanta. The family housing complex is phase one of the housing component of the development.

Phase two will be a $30.5 million senior housing complex.

Amon Martin is southeast region vice president for Pennrose, the housing complex developer and co-owner. It broke ground in May 2022. Martin offered the following financing details for the family housing complex:

Saint Joseph’s Health System, Atlanta, owns and is leasing the land, and is a co-developer of the family housing complex, with a 20% ownership interest. In addition, it provided $4.37 million to erect a shared parking deck at McAuley Park.

Pennrose is co-developer and coowner of McAuley Station and its property manager. It has an 80% ownership interest in McAuley Station.

Trinity Health, Livonia, Michigan, provided a $4 million long-term, lowinterest loan to the family housing

at 424 Decatur Street in Sweet Auburn to expand the clinic and construct the housing complexes.

Early in 2020, Saint Joseph’s brought in Pennrose, a for-profit real estate developer, as a co-owner, co-developer and property manager of the $81 million housing development called McAuley Station. Pennrose is formalizing the complex stack of publicprivate financing for McAuley Station. Saint Joseph’s and Mercy Care are leasing the land for the housing to Pennrose.

Jaime Dircksen, Trinity Health vice president of community health and wellbeing, says the partnership and project gained the momentum they needed with local government agencies because of Saint Joseph’s involvement and the strong capital commitments that both Saint Joseph’s and Trinity Health brought to the table along with their reputation-based ability to attract additional partners.

Health service expansion

The first leg of the project, the expansion and renovation of the Mercy Care clinic, was completed about a year ago. Mercy Care’s foundation raised funds to cover the

complex.

Truist Bank, the construction lender, is investing $30 million in private equity generated from an allocation of low-income housing tax credits from the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. With that investment, the bank will become a limited equity partner in the family housing development.

The Department of Community Affairs also provided a $3 million HOME loan, which is a Department of Housing and Urban Development loan, and a $4 million National Housing Trust Fund loan.

Invest Atlanta, the city’s development authority, issued tax-exempt bonds in the amount of $23 million and provided a $4 million tax allocation district grant.

Partners for Home, an Atlanta nonprofit, provided a $1.2 million grant toward 30 permanent supportive housing units for people with diagnosed mental illness.

Atlanta Housing, the city’s public housing authority, will provide projectbased rental subsidies for residents of the permanent supportive housing.

Fulton County, Georgia, is funding a case manager to provide supportive services to residents of the permanent supportive housing units.

$22 million in construction costs. The construction modernized the existing clinic and added a three-story building. With clinic space more than doubled, Mercy Care expanded behavioral health and dental services and added vision care.

The expansion is allowing Mercy Care to add 3,000 patients to the 6,000 already on its rosters at the Decatur Street location. Mercy Care also opened a community resource center where community health workers address the social needs of patients. Many of the significant proportion of Mercy Care’s patients who are unsheltered or experiencing housing instability rely on mental health services and social services.

Affordable housing

In May 2022, construction began on a 170-unit, $50.5 million family housing complex. The family housing complex could be move-in ready early next year.

Thirty of the units will be permanent supportive housing for people with diagnosed mental illness and 10 will be transitional housing for people discharged from medical care and for Mercy Care patients.

Saint Joseph’s and Mercy Care are helping

McAuley Park Project

Phase 1 Clinic

Consists of addition of 3-story building as well as the renovation of the existing 2-story Decatur Street Clinic.

Family housing

170 units, 30 of which are permanent supportive housing and 10 of which are transitional housing for Mercy Care patients.

Phase 2

Senior housing

96 units of independent living affordable housing for residents age 62 and above.

to fund the transitional housing units.

In line with parameters set out in the project’s financing agreements, nearly 60% of the units will be for renters with low incomes; about 18% for those with extremely low incomes; and approximately 18% for those with moderate incomes. (The remainder are for people needing transitional housing after discharge from medical facilities.)

Andrews says it is most likely staff members who apply for residency would qualify for the “workforce” units rather than rent subsidized units. Workforce apartments are for tenants with moderate household incomes.

The final phase of the development will be a $30.5 million senior housing complex with 96 affordable independent living apartments. Construction may begin in the third quarter of 2024, with completion potentially in 2025.

Planting a flag

Plans call for Mercy Care clinicians to offer health screenings at both the senior and family housing complexes to residents who want them.

Dircksen says the funding Trinity Health is providing for the housing portion of the project constitutes the largest single investment that health system has made in a health care-housing development project. She notes that this investment is in line with Trinity Health’s focus on investing in projects and programs that will improve the health of the communities it serves.

Dircksen says that Saint Joseph’s is the only health care organization in Atlanta that is involved in a project that integrates health and housing. She hopes the initiative will be a “call to action” for other health care providers in Atlanta and in other cities experiencing a housing crisis.

Lawler notes that health care providers do not need to be housing experts, they just need to be good at assembling committed coalitions of partners to address housing inequities. Chances are that health care providers already have relationships with the types of partners that could be vital in such a coalition, she says.

“We hope this becomes standard. We don’t want McAuley Park to be a unicorn,” Lawler says.

In other good news for the neighborhood, the nonprofit Mercy Housing is preparing to open a 117-unit development for families and for individuals who were formerly unhoused about a half mile from the Mercy Clinic. Thrive Sweet Auburn is a mixed-use development with social services and some commercial space onsite. It has permanent supportive housing, and affordable housing for households that earn between 30% to 80% of the area median income.

Visit chausa.org/chworld for more information on the demographics of the community.

jminda@chausa.org

Lawler

Andrews

Martin