Catholic Health World - August 1, 2020

CHA to offer CEO forums 2 Benedictine’s brand refresh 7 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION

AUGUST 1, 2020 VOLUME 36, NUMBER 8

Hospital’s meal program boosts spirits of givers and receivers

By LISA EISENHAUER

A family carries away weekend meal packages provided by Mercy Medical Center in Canton, Ohio. The hospital began the meal program this spring amid the novel coronavirus pandemic to address food insecurity in a low-income neighborhood. It is funded through a grant from the Sisters of the Humility of Mary.

A weekend meal program started in March has helped to nourish families in an impoverished section of southeast Canton, Ohio, and provided a spiritual lift to the group from Mercy Medical Center behind it.

The meal program began in March when the city’s schools closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Sr. Carolyn Capuano, HM, vice president of mission and ministry at Mercy Medical Center. The hospital is part of Cleveland-based Sisters of Charity Health System.

“We connected with the Canton city schools when it became apparent that the schools were closing and that they were going, thankfully, to provide meals for the children Monday through Friday,” Sr. Capuano said of herself and colleagues at the hospital. “We started talking about what Continued on 6

Peer navigators improve health literacy of Alaskan natives and immigrants City of Anchorage gives weekly COVID updates in 19 languages Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm novices create cards to send to residents of facilities affiliated with the congregation. From left are Sr. Sharon Rose Carmel, Sr. Dolores Carmel and Sr. Joanne Therese Carmel. Carmel is a “religious name.” The novices do not use their legal surnames.

Congregations find creative ways to support health ministry amid shutdowns Sisters, brothers provide presence, prayer, PPE

By JULIE MINDA An immigrant practices teeth brushing techniques she is learning in an oral care class taught by a peer leader navigator in Anchorage, Alaska.

Sisters and brothers in congregations that founded Catholic health systems are

Sr. Peggy Martin, OP, reflects on decades at leading edge of sponsorship changes

By JULIE MINDA

Sr. Peggy Martin, OP, retired June 30 as executive vice president of sponsorship and governance for Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, capping off decades of thought leadership in the Catholic health ministry.

A Dominican Sister of Peace and canon lawyer, Sr. Martin was instrumental in the sponsorship changes involved with the merging of four Catholic health systems to form Catholic Health Initiatives in 1996. CHI ’joined with Dignity Health to form CommonSpirit Health in 2019.

CHI’s sponsor, Sr. Peggy Martin, OP Catholic Health Care Federation, was Catholic health care’s first ministerial juridic person. (That entity became the MJP of CommonSpirit.)

The MJP structure allows for greater lay involvement in sponsorship and has canonical responsibility that had previously been held by religious congregations.

The Catholic Health Care Federation was a model for many Catholic health systems.

Over her career, Sr. Martin has established herself as a foremost expert on canon law, sponsorship and lay formation. In 2015, CHA awarded her its prestigious Sr. Concilia Moran Award for her creativity and breakthrough thinking.

She reflected with Catholic Health World recently on her many years of service.

staying actively engaged with the leadership, clinicians, staff and patients of hospitals and long-term care sites, offering support and encouragement through the long trial of the pandemic.

Provincial leaders and others from a sampling of congregations say their

What drew you to a life of ministry, and to the Dominican Sisters in particular?

Even when I was really young, I talked about being a sister because I wanted to teach people about Jesus. And as I got older, I never lost that desire to do that.

I did look at different congregations, but

Continued on 8

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Incarnate Word sisters aid asylum seekers at the southern border

By PATRICIA CORRIGAN

“Hunker down.” That’s the message many medical centers and municipalities are broadcasting throughout the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic. But how is that message received in communities that have no comparable phrase in their native languages?

A dozen peer leader navigators, part of a multicultural, multilingual health education and outreach initiative in Anchorage, Alaska, have solved that problem, advising individuals they serve to simply “stay home.” The navigators also provide detailed information on handwashing, disinfecting surfaces and wearing masks. Providence Health & Services Alaska has financially supported the program since it began about eight years ago.

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Sisters tap their network to deliver necessities to tent cities in Mexico

“The intent was to provide the congregation with action lines moving forward,” said Sr. Adriana Calzada Vazquez, CCVI. “We think of it not as a new program but as a way to invite our partners to collaborate in a more intentional way.”

The future became now in March, when COVID-19 threatened both sides of the border. The sisters activated members of their network to address the immediate needs of the migrants they serve by supplying emergency essentials.

By KATHLEEN NELSON

After months of discernment and discussion, the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, distilled their vision for the future in five words: Human dignity knows no borders.

They had developed a multipronged plan in which the sisters serve as connectors and conduits for their partners and missions in the United States, Mexico and Peru. Playing a vital role is CHRISTUS Health system, of which the congregation is a founder and sponsor.

A woman and children living in a refugee camp in Matamoros, Mexico, wear masks created through the efforts of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio. Earlier this year the congregation’s Matamoros Mask Project delivered 1,064 masks to a tent city where asylum seekers wait for U.S. immigration rulings on their petitions.

A new path forward The congregation started the process of refocusing its response to immigrants in the shadow of Migration Protection Protocols from the U.S. Department of Homeland Continued on 7

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CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD August 1, 2020

CHA takes on mission, functions of ministry executive networking organization Beginning Aug. 1, CHA takes on the functions of the Catholic CEO Healthcare Connection, a nonprofit organization that gathered Catholic health ministry executives for networking and collaboration.

In a memo announcing the change to CCHC members, CCHC Board Chair Laura Kaiser wrote that since forming in 1985, CCHC had been an important convener of Catholic health care leaders, serving as a forum for members to share best practices and deepen relationships across Catholic

health care. She wrote, “Collaboration is an integral part of our ministry’s ability to thrive, and I look forward to seeing the great work of CCHC continue as part of CHA.” Kaiser is president and chief executive of St. Louis’ SSM Health and a CHA board trustee.

Operated under Executive Director Roger Butler, CCHC had helped ministry executives to broaden their expertise while also strengthening the mission of Catholic health care, according to information

from the organization’s website. Butler completed his service as the organization’s executive director July 10.

The board of CCHC is dissolving the organization and transitioning its functions, operations and informational assets to CHA under a letter of understanding.

In addition to chief executive networking, CCHC’s work has centered around strategy and innovation, clinical quality leadership and cybersecurity. It convened forums, retreats, and networking events

and hosted webinars.

Loren Chandler, CHA chief operations and finance officer, said CHA is evaluating all of CCHC’s programming and will determine in consultation with CHA members which offerings are most valuable to them and how best to continue those offerings.

By the end of the year, CHA will make decisions on the programming schedule and fee structure for former CCHC forums and specialty groups.

CHA and Vizient release community benefit accounting resources

By INDU SPUGNARDI

CHA and Vizient have released a set of resources to help tax-exempt hospitals more accurately and efficiently report community benefit. The resources were developed in response to requests from hospital community benefit and finance professionals for more detailed guidance on how to report certain categories of community benefit expenses. These categories included expenses related to health professions education, research and subsidized health services.

CHA staff also heard from the field that health care organizations — particularly hospitals with many staff responsible for collecting community benefit data, health systems with multiple hospitals, and those undergoing mergers — could benefit from more formalized reporting processes that link the work of community benefit and finance staff.

Comprehensive and accurate reporting of community benefit is a vital function for tax-exempt hospitals. As Julie Trocchio, CHA’s senior director of community benefit and continuing care, noted, “communities and policymakers want to know that taxexempt hospitals are fulfilling their charitable obligations, that they are putting their resources towards activities that improve community health.” Accurate reporting also helps hospitals meet important organizational goals, particularly as community health improvement is seen as a key component of helping organizations meet quality and cost expectations.

Trocchio also recognized the longtime partnership between CHA and Vizient, a health care performance improvement company, in providing community benefit resources to all tax-exempt hospitals.

“Community benefit is not just a Catholic health care issue; it is an important issue to all mission-driven health care organizations and we are thankful to be able to partner with Vizient in developing resources that help all tax-exempt hospitals meet the needs of their communities.”

The resources were written by Keith Hearle, founder and president of Verite Healthcare Consulting. Prior to founding Verite, Hearle worked with The Lewin Group where he helped CHA develop its first resources around community benefit reporting in 1989. These reporting guidelines would eventually be adopted by the Internal Revenue Service in 2008 to develop the IRS Form 990 Schedule H for Hospitals. This form was developed by the IRS in response to calls from Congress for more transparency and accountability around the community benefit provided by tax-exempt hospitals. Since that time Hearle has helped CHA update guidance around accounting and reporting community benefit as rules and regulations have changed.

These new resources build upon guidance provided in CHA’s A Guide for Planning and Reporting Community Benefit.

That foundational resource provides a comprehensive approach to community benefit, including guidance on accounting and reporting. Given the high-level nature of the guidance in the guide, CHA

has developed these new accounting and reporting resources to address the more specific concerns and needs of accounting and tax staff who support community benefit reporting.

The resources are available online in the community benefit section of chausa.org and available free of charge to all. The resources include: Community Benefit and Finance/ Tax Staff: Establishing an Infrastructure for Accurate Reporting — This resource describes 13 infrastructure elements for effective community benefit reporting including dedicated staff, written policies

and procedures and staff training.

Community Benefit Reporting: Accounting Primer — A review of relevant accounting principles and summary of accounting methods for reportable community benefit categories. It identifies common underreporting and overreporting issues.

Community Benefit Reporting: Health Professions — This resource discusses common reporting issues including how to assure all reportable health professions education programs are identified.

Community Benefit Reporting: Research — This document discusses com-

mon research reporting issues including accounting for research provided by the hospital versus other entities, research that is fully funded, types of studies that are counted and not counted as community benefit, and research that is partially funded by for-profit sources.

Community Benefit Reporting: Subsidized Services — This category is frequently underreported because the services can be hard to identify. The CHA resource provides steps to identify and report clinical product lines that are subsidized by the hospital because they are needed by communities.

NEW WEBINAR SERIES

Introducing

Sponsorship: Sustaining the Ministry A new webinar series for sponsors, CEOs, senior executives, mission leaders, bishops and board members

This two-part series will examine the roles and responsibilities of sponsors, address evolving issues in juridic person sponsorship models and provide insights about cultivating effective working relationships with church leaders, executives and boards.

SERIES 1

Fundamentals of Sponsorship Six webinar sessions Aug. 12, 2020 – Feb. 10, 2021 Second Wednesday of the month 2 – 3:30 p.m. ET SERIES 2

Advanced Issues in Sponsorship Six webinar sessions March 10 – Aug. 11, 2021 Second Wednesday of the month 2 – 3:30 p.m. ET

REGISTER TODAY! View the curriculum at CHAUSA.ORG/SPONSORWEBINARS

August 1, 2020 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD

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Four siblings care for patients and each other through the pandemic

By NANCY FOWLER

Growing up in southeastern Michigan, the six Vecore brothers and sisters shared everything from camping trips to backyard baseball games to their Catholic faith. As adults, the siblings continue to celebrate holidays and birthdays together, along with their parents and their combined six children.

Since mid-March, four of them have also shared something more serious: the possibility of exposure to COVID-19 on the job.

They all work in health care. Kim Kerr, 37, is a nurse at St. Mary Mercy Livonia Hospital in the Detroit suburbs. Melanie Hunter, 35, is an intensive care nurse at St. Joseph Mercy Oakland in Pontiac. Both are Trinity Health hospitals. Joe Vecore, 33, is doing clinical rotations in pursuit of a doctorate of nursing practice – nurse anesthesia at McLaren Bay Region Hospital in Bay City.

As a nurse anesthetist at Ascension Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc Township, Lisa Vecore, 38, was initially less likely to work with COVID-19 patients.

“I was concerned for my siblings who were on the front lines,” Lisa Vecore said.

In late March, she also joined the front lines after the cancellation of nonemergency surgeries shifted her duties to caring for patients in an ICU unit designated for patients with COVID-19. Especially given her own close family ties, it was heartbreaking for Lisa Vecore to witness the emotional pain of patients who could not have their loved ones near for comfort in life-anddeath situations.

“We’d hold the phone up to the patient’s ear,” she said. “It was so hard watching families say goodbye over the phone or on FaceTime.”

Lisa Vecore is back to being a nurse anes-

Nursing is the family business for Michigan siblings, from left, Kim Kerr, Melanie Hunter, Joe Vecore and Lisa Vecore. This pre-pandemic photo was taken at Trinity Health’s St Joseph Mercy Oakland in Pontiac, where three of the siblings have worked.

thetist now. But as the first wave of the pandemic drags on into summer, she continues to worry about her siblings.

“I feel nervous for them more than for myself,” she said. “My sisters both have kids and my brother has a child.”

‘They understand how I feel’ None of the siblings expressed fear for themselves. But all are concerned about the same two family members: their parents, Jeffry and Cathy Vecore. At 65 and 63, they’re at higher risk for severe complications from the coronavirus. Their adult children want to protect “G” and “Grandma Kitty” from any possible exposure to the contagion from themselves or even the grandchildren, so babysitting is out for now.

This year’s Mother’s Day greetings were delivered by phone or from 6 feet away in the driveway of their childhood home. By Father’s Day, the family felt safe enough to gather for an outdoor barbecue at their parents’ home but stood 6 feet apart and talked

Upcoming Events from The Catholic Health Association Global Health Networking Call

Diversity & Disparities Networking Call

Sept. 16 |1 p.m. ET

Aug. 5 | 3:30 p.m. ET

Formation Community in Practice Webinar Session 2: Formation Biases – We See From Where We Stand Aug. 6 | 1:30 p.m. ET (Invitation only)

Sponsorship: Sustaining the Ministry Webinar Series Series 1 Session 1: Theology, Ministry and Sponsorship Aug. 12 | 2 – 3:30 p.m. ET

Faith Community Networking Call

Mission in Long-Term Care Networking Call Sept. 22| 3 p.m. ET (Members only)

to each other through masks.

Like her siblings, Kerr would love the chance to hug her parents and have upclose conversations. But the mother of three children, ages 5 to 9, knows she’ll have to wait.

“I don’t want to be that person who gives the coronavirus to our parents, and then spend the rest of my life thinking, ‘What if I hadn’t gone over there that day?’” Kerr said.

All six siblings keep up with each other through a group text they started long before the pandemic. They share pictures of their kids, one sister’s new kitten and funny memes. Those in health care also swap stories about their jobs.

“We’re all working in a similar situation,” Kerr said. “They understand how I feel.”

Daily routine When COVID-19 first arrived in Michigan, many of their texts focused on the uncertainty of the emerging situation. The siblings wanted to know how many COVID19 patients each other had. They asked whether the others had enough personal protective equipment and were curious about how they protected their families when they return from work.

But now, routines have set in. For example, to minimize the risk of contagion within her nuclear family, Hunter has grown accustomed to changing out of her scrubs into regular clothing at work, before coming home to her husband and two daughters, age 4 and 6.

“I think it’s harder for people who haven’t been affected by COVID-19,” Hunter said. “They don’t understand it as much, that people get really sick from it.”

Joe Vecore, who returned to nursing for a month when his clinicals were interrupted by the pandemic, views the hospital as less risky than many other public places.

At work, Joe Vecore said, he has all the per-

sonal protective equipment he needs. But the grocery store is a different story. He does the shopping for himself, his wife and their 3-year-old son, making sure to clean all the packaging with sanitizing wipes and throw away the bags. (Michigan issued a mandate in April requiring all residents to wear face masks in public settings, but there is no penalty for noncompliance.)

“At least in the hospital, you know which patients are positive,” Joe Vecore said. “Out in the general public, you have no idea.”

Like everyone, Joe Vecore looks forward to the day when COVID-19 is no longer a risk and he won’t have to wear a mask at the grocery store or at work. But that day is not yet in sight. By early July, as the number of infections in the U.S. continued to rise at an alarming clip, a growing number of states were mandating the wearing of masks in public places.

“The N95 is really tight on your face, and you’re kind of rebreathing what you’re exhaling,” he said. “Then, after you get out into the fresh air and take off your mask, you think, ‘Gosh, this feels great.’”

Looking forward to family time Lisa Vecore is also being careful at work and in public but has a philosophical take on her own risk.

“If I end up with COVID-19, I guess that’s just what’s supposed to happen,” she said.

“I can’t be nervous about it while trying to take care of patients.”

Lisa Vecore relies on her faith to get through hard times. She often turns to a book of short devotions a friend gave her.

One particular daily passage that coincided with the day of her Catholic Health World interview brought her comfort. “’I want you to know how safe and secure you are in my presence,’” Lisa Vecore read from the book, thinking of Jesus.

With an as yet indeterminant timeline for a prospective vaccine against COVID19, Lisa Vecore pines for the relaxed and frequent family gatherings she once enjoyed.

“My siblings and I used to hang out on Friday or Saturday nights — more so than other siblings — and a lot of times, somebody has a bonfire,” Lisa Vecore said. “I probably took that for granted because we did it so often. I just hope we can do it again.”

Kerr also misses her sibling time and her children miss their cousins, aunts and uncles. But a silver lining of the pandemic has been that her immediate family of five has grown closer out of the necessity of isolating from others.

“We’re cooking together, playing outside, taking walks,” Kerr said. “Doing all those things we didn’t do enough of, before.”

Sponsor Formation Program for Catholic Health Care Webinar – Session Three Oct. 8 – 9 | (Invitation only)

Sponsorship: Sustaining the Ministry Webinar Series Series 1 Session 3: Models of Sponsorship Oct. 14 | 2 – 3:30 p.m. ET

Aug. 27 | 3 p.m. ET

Sponsorship: Sustaining the Ministry Webinar Series Series 1 Session 2: Evolution of Sponsorship — Past and Future

Community Benefit 101 Virtual Meeting Oct. 27–29 |2 – 5 p.m. ET

Sept. 9 | 2 – 3:30 p.m. ET

A Passionate Voice for Compassionate Care® chausa.org/calendar The Vecore family with parents, spouses and grandchildren in a photo taken before the pandemic.

Matriarch Cathy Vecore, back row, third from left, is a retired nurse who went to nursing school after the birth of her sixth child. Four of her six children followed her into nursing.

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CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD August 1, 2020

Michigan hospital, community formed united front against coronavirus

By LISA EISENHAUER

As COVID-19 was sweeping across the nation, Livonia Mayor Maureen Brosnan and the community’s other leaders were unaware that the suburban Detroit city was getting slammed especially hard by the pandemic.

“We kind of thought that everybody else Brosnan around us was dealing with the same dynamic that we were,” recalled Brosnan.

But the patient load was so heavy that St. Mary Mercy Livonia, the only hospital in the city, had nearly doubled the size of its 16-bed intensive care unit by early April to meet demand and added a “comfort care unit” for the dozens of patients dying from the virus.

When comparative numbers started coming in from the state, Brosnan and others learned that the COVID case and death rates for Livonia were above those of any Michigan city except Detroit. At its peak on April 9, the death rate for people who contracted the virus in the city of 96,000 reached 18%, Brosnan said. The fatality rate for patients with COVID was at 4% nationwide in mid-July, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine Coronavirus Resource Center.

Eye of the storm The virus might have been even more devastating if not for the joint efforts of city officials and leaders of St. Mary Mercy, where Brosnan chairs the board of directors. The hospital is part of the Saint Joseph Mercy Health System, a subsidiary of Trinity Health.

Working together, city and hospital leaders were able to find local companies to make personal protective gear for health care workers. As COVID spread rapidly in the city’s long-term care facilities, St. Mary Mercy set up a task force to contain the infection and invited participation from the city.

The hospital’s infectious disease experts consulted on setting up quarantine units at 15 long-term care facilities for residents with COVID and on additional steps to protect other residents from contagion. The expertise also was used to figure out burn rates on

Sr. Peggy Martin, OP From page 1

the Dominicans, their whole focus was on teaching and truth. And so, the Dominicans were my choice, and it was the right choice. I really feel called. I see my work in canon law as a continuation of that because in canon law what I’m trying to do is to help people find the truth, to be in right relationship and find the right path. That is what canon law is all about, it’s very freeing. I think my whole life has been an evolution from the very first call to want to teach people and help people to understand Jesus.

Why did you feel it was so important to have an influence in the application of canon law?

Because priests and parishes were always saying, “You can’t do this, canon law does not allow it.” But I already knew that canon law did allow it. I already had some knowledge of canon law, but I wanted to get the piece of paper behind the knowledge, because people listen — it’s different when people know I’m a canon lawyer.

Also, I learned canon law because I didn’t want anybody to step all over the sisters, and I really wanted us to be able to come into our own and for our ministries to continue under the Catholic identity, and I thought I had to have the paper, the degree, behind what I said.

more than 100 patients over the period of four to six weeks, providing them a peaceful end to their lives, Griffin said.

St. Mary Mercy Livonia staff react to a tribute to their heroism from first responders. Police and fire department vehicles ringed the hospital to show support.

protective supplies.

The hospital and city worked together to identify potential sites for COVID units outside the hospital. Fortunately, the broadside the city had taken from the pandemic eased by mid-May and the plans for those extra care spaces could be put on hold.

Nevertheless, Brosnan said at the time: “We by no means consider ourselves out of crisis management mode.”

Dr. Matt Griffin, chief medical officer of St. Mary Mercy, said: “We kind of feel that we’re at a stable point. We’re certainly not Griffin done with this and none of us anticipate that we’ll be done any time very soon.”

On its busiest day, April 7, the hospital was treating 152 inpatients with COVID and diverting others to the five other southeastern Michigan hospitals in the Saint Joseph Mercy Health System. By mid-July, the number of inpatients being treated for COVID had dropped to one to three patients on average .

Bracing for the blow Before the surge hit Livonia, hospital leaders watched the virus inundate hospitals in Seattle and then New York. “Pretty quickly, in the first couple of days, we were convinced that we were going to face a very similar crisis due to our patient population,” Griffin said.

Livonia’s population has a high rate of You started out in education. How did you end up in health care?

I was elected to leadership of my congregation, and my particular congregation in Great Bend, Kansas, we owned hospitals. I was the assistant prioress, and because of that, part of my job was to be on the boards of these hospitals and do all kinds of things with hospitals and nursing homes. I was supposed to chair all of these boards. But when I was elected to full-time leadership, I went to my first board meeting and said, “Do you think I want to chair a hospital board? If you think I want to do that, think again.” I said I will commit to be on every hospital board and go to the meetings and everything, but I will not chair them. And I said it is time for us to put into action what we have been saying about involving the laity. By then we were a part of Catholic Health Corporation of Omaha, Nebraska, and they helped us to allow our hospitals to elect their own chair for the very first time.

(Catholic Health Corporation was a predecessor of CHI.) Was the effort to have laity chair hospital boards a precursor to lay involvement as sponsors of Catholic health systems?

Yes, somebody has to start it. And when we were in Great Bend we were really women on the frontier. We were not conservative thinkers.

You were instrumental in the creation of early formation programs for lay spon-

comorbid conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and pulmonary disease and many residents are elderly, making them especially susceptible to a poor outcome from COVID. Within three days of seeing its first patients with the infection, the hospital set up a screening site outside of its emergency department. Few of the people who came through were actually tested due to restrictions on who was eligible for testing; and, for those who were, the results took days to get.

The screening staff nevertheless was able to identify those who might be infected, get patients in the direst conditions into hospital care and educate those who had signs of the infection on how to self-quarantine.

Griffin said that outdoor screening site was one of several ideas pitched by staff and adopted by St. Mary Mercy’s leaders that proved key in getting the hospital through its worst days of the pandemic surge. Another was to turn an area that had once housed the emergency department but was more recently being used for storage into a second ICU. At staff suggestion, the hospital repurposed what had been a chemical dependency unit into a hospice unit for patients with COVID, who themselves or whose families opted against aggressive medical intervention.

“Sad as it is that we needed it, I think one of our biggest successes during this event was our comfort care unit,” Griffin said, referring to the unit for end-of-life care.

The unit’s team of specialists — physicians, nurses and support staff — cared for

sors of public juridic persons. How did formation evolve to be considered so essential?

Sr. Catherine DeClercq, OP, had started a formation trial at Trinity Health where she was governance and sponsorship head and she asked me to teach canon law. (That program led to the formation of The Collaborative Formation Program for Public Juridic Persons sponsored by five sponsorship entities.)

We got it all together — we were the first.

We did it for 11 years. CHA in recent years has taken it over.

Lay formation has blossomed. It is even more necessary now than in the past, as fewer members of religious congregations are available to mentor leaders in the health care ministries. Formation gives laypeople the confidence to bring their wonderful spirituality forward in the ministry. They need us to help them to do that.

How has the transition to ministerial juridic sponsorship gone?

I think it’s what it’s supposed to be. It’s involving more laity. The issue is the historical church has not all kept up with this, and that’s a toughie. But the laity have really gotten into it, and it’s phenomenal how this has all gone, and I am really excited about it. The church moves slowly, that’s historically the way it is. But that’s why we need this formation stuff, because we need to keep the laity involved and we need to keep their courage up — for them not to get dis-

Community pitches in As St. Mary Mercy was in the throes of the patient surge from the pandemic, concerns about supplies arose. Shortages of medical necessities were being reported across the globe and even Trinity Health’s well-connected and reliable supply chain couldn’t fully meet the need for goods like respirator masks and surgical gowns.

Griffin said St. Mary Mercy’s leaders paid close attention to ensure that protective gear was being conserved without violating federal guidelines; there was no easy way to replenish supplies.

That’s one of the ways the collaboration with the city paid off. With the hospital providing prototypes, city officials were able to tap local companies to produce scarce items for the hospitals and long-term care facilities.

Two firms made plastic Spivey face shields and others made gowns and surgical masks.

“The community really provided support through the manufacturing sector,” hospital President David Spivey recalled.

Better together First responders from Livonia and other localities in southeast Michigan turned out in force April 16 to honor and thank the frontline caregivers at St. Mary Mercy. The city’s video of the tribute, which included prayers for the first responders and families impacted by COVID, can be viewed at chausa.org/chworld.

Brosnan called her dual connection with the city and the hospital, one of Livonia’s top five employers, “an ideal arrangement” because she was able to help them merge their expertise and resources. She has served on either the hospital’s or Saint Joseph Mercy’s board for 19 years. She said she finds personal fulfillment in the spirituality-based mission of Catholic hospitals.

“The big part of how, as a leader, I was able to get through, and continue to get through, this crisis is having that background and having that foundation,” she said. “And knowing that I had a Catholic hospital in my backyard to help me do it.”

couraged. Because they can do the work of sponsorship; there’s not a doubt in my mind about that.

What will you miss most after you retire?

I love to see people grow and to learn different things and to get involved with different things, so I’ll miss all of that. I will miss the people, definitely. But it is time to let other people lead and to have a different approach. That’s very important.

What’s ahead for you?

I asked my congregation if I could have a year off and stay in Denver during that year at least, and they agreed to that. Before COVID I was hoping to go see each of my siblings, and to visit an aunt and different friends, but that is not going to be possible in 2020. Maybe in 2021.

I have one more year on one of the hospital boards in Pueblo, Colorado, and I’m going to finish that term out. I’ll keep my fingers in a few things. And I will consult on canon law.

I’ll probably pick up my knitting and I’ll read novels more.

To view a video created to honor Sr. Martin upon her receipt of the Sr. Concilia Moran Award, visit chausa.org/ sistermartin. jminda@chausa.org

August 1, 2020 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD

Health literacy From page 1

“The peer leader navigator program is tremendous,” said Nathan D. Johnson, regional director, community health investment for Providence St. Joseph Health – Alaska Region. “Immigrants may have trust issues as well as cultural and language barriers, and presenting Johnson information in different languages in a culturally appropriate way is an exquisite example of where health care needs to go.”

This year, Providence’s community benefit funds provided the navigator program with $80,000 for two years plus funds for nurse oversight of content development.

“The mission of Providence serves the poor and vulnerable,” Johnson noted, “but we have an increasing desire to address social determinants of health in order to get ahead of the curve and move into a prevention space, so we desire that the peer leader navigator program would continue.”

More than 100 languages are spoken in the city of Anchorage, including Alaskan native languages, Spanish, Thai, Korean, Chinese, Hmong, Russian and numerous African dialects. Some 800 adults and families that speak about half of those 100 languages are served each year by the Alaska

Fadwa Edais, a peer leader navigator who is from Jordan and speaks Arabic, promotes safe medication disposal and has distributed over 200 disposal bags provided by the state of Alaska.

Literacy Program, which helps coordinate The Anchorage Health Literacy Collaborative. The latter partnership is made up of private, public and nonprofit organizations, including Providence Alaska Medical Center and its Faith Community Nursing Program.

Founded in 2007 to improve health care for low-literacy, underserved populations in Anchorage, The Anchorage Health Literacy Collaborative started the peer leader navigator program. It was coordinated by Linda Shepard, a Providence nurse who

is now retired. The peer leader navigators provide information on access to health care, mental health care and disaster preparedness.

The cadre of health promoters were originally called peer language navigators and they were deployed in their own immigrant or native communities as knowledgeable, trusted resources. But as Shepard explains in a June 2019 story on the Providence Health & Services website, the health challenges for immigrants didn’t have that much to do with language. “It has much more to do with the experience of migrating to the United States. So, we changed the name to peer leader navigator instead of peer language navigator.

“That lived experience of coming into a country is what really connects them,” she added.

Marisol Vargas, program manager at the Alaska Literacy Program, has volunteered as a peer leader navigator for eight years, working with Spanish-speaking individuals. “We have lost personal contact during the pandemic, with no face-to-face meetings, but we continue to help communities receive important information,” she said. The navigators also are working with city government leaders, who have posted videos, posters and news reports about COVID-19 in numerous languages on the city’s website and on social media.

“We’re working with the municipality to help show people how to wash their hands and sanitize their homes, how to stay safe,”

5

Vargas said. It was Vargas who first pondered the term “hunker down” on the city’s website. She didn’t know the phrase, and wondered how she could help other Spanish-speaking individuals understand it.

“Now I know it means stay at home, don’t go outside,” she said. “Language matters, but in languages other than English, it’s not always just the message — it’s how it’s delivered.” That’s why peer leader navigators are staying in contact with people by phone as well, trying to support them and sharing information with them from other institutions.

Some navigators are translators or language interpreters; others work with those specialists to hone pertinent messages. The navigators receive small stipends for staffing special public health events and outreach activities, but otherwise the work is done on a voluntary basis. “This isn’t really a job — it’s a passion,” Vargas said. “The peer leader navigators do this work because they like to do it. My reward is when a person smiles and says they understand, or says ‘thank you.’”

Immigrants value the navigators, but they aren’t the only fans. “Providence values them, as does the municipality — they were invited on Anchorage’s language-access task force,” said Pauline “Polly” Smith, executive director of Alaska Literacy Program. “The head of that task force has said the information the peer Smith leader navigators are providing about what needs to be done, how best to do it and what the needs are is driving policy.”

And now, Smith said, the navigators have blossomed into a new field — video production. For people who are not necessarily literate in their own languages, the navigators are creating videos to help individuals better cope with the challenges of reducing contagion risks and social distancing. Some of the videos have been posted on the municipality’s website, where the information can reach far more people than one-on-one contacts.

“Before, the expertise of the peer leader navigators was recognized as an important resource,” Smith said. “Now, it is critical, a matter of life or death.”

Catholic Health World (ISSN 87564068) is published semi­monthly, except monthly in January, April, July and October and copyrighted © by the Catholic Health Association of the United States. POSTMASTER: Address all subscription orders, inquiries, address changes, etc., to Kim Hewitt, 4455 Woodson Road, St. Louis, MO 631343797; phone: 314-253-3421; email: khewitt@chausa.org. Periodicals postage rate is paid at St. Louis and additional mailing offices. Annual subscription rates: CHA members free, others $29 and foreign $29.

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6

CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD August 1, 2020

Meal program From page 1

we could we do to outreach because we had planned several minority health programs which had to be canceled.”

With funding support from Sr. Capuano’s congregation, the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, they settled on a meal program Sr. Capuano that would “bridge the gap for the weekends and provide nourishment to parents as well as children,” she said.

Beginning in mid-March, she and others set up a table outside Allen Reading & Math Preparatory School on Fridays. When children or families came to pick up the lunches provided by the Canton City School District, Sr. Capuano and her crew offered them packages that included a main dish that only has to be warmed in an oven or microwave, and a range of other foods like bread, oatmeal, peanut butter, and fresh fruits and vegetables.

Each package contains enough food to help a family of four through the weekend.

Large families can have two.

Determined small duo The meal packages are available to anyone. Most of them go to low-income families who live nearby. Sometimes those families come on foot and carry them home.

Two small brothers who come alone have been among the regulars. The first day they came, the boys picked up the school meals but were reluctant to take the weekend meal package. The older boy, who appeared to be about 6, said his father warned him not to take candy from strangers, so Sr. Capuano opened the food package to show him that there was no candy inside.

Once the boy was persuaded to accept the box, the weight of it along with the meals from the school proved too much for him and his smaller brother to manage. Tenicia James, who oversees the giveaways as mission outreach coordinator for Mercy, ended up carrying the box to the brothers’ home at Skyline Terrace, a nearby public housing complex, and setting it outside the door.

“You could tell that there probably wasn’t any food in their home because they were deterJames mined to get that food home,” James said.

Since the school year ended, the weekend food program has continued at a site across the street from the school in collaboration with the Stark Metropolitan Housing Authority. The school district has opened other sites where children can get weekday lunches.

Nourishment and employment The meals are prepared by Metz Culinary Management, the company that operates the cafeteria at Mercy. The contract for the meals helped the food service keep some of its workers employed after the hospital scaled back nonurgent services as part of its pandemic preparations. “I think I could hear the joy in their voices when they would talk about the different meals they wanted to plan,” Sr. Capuano said of the food service workers. “They are happy to be a vital part of our outreach.”

Among the most popular entrees have been pasta with meatballs and sauce and creamed chicken over biscuits, which was the one provided on Mother’s Day weekend. That food package also came with flowers donated by Metz. “I thought that was a beautiful touch,” said Elaine Camp-

bell, who recalled seeing delighted children handing blooms to their mothers.

Campbell is director of Mercy Development Foundation and one of the regulars helping at the meal table every week. She is keenly aware of the need among the families who get the meals.

She is Mercy’s representative for a program The meal packages given away by Mercy Medical Center in Canton, Ohio, called Canton Invest are available to anyone. Each package includes enough food to feed a Health that has gotten family of four over a weekend. The program started in March and is set to funding from the non- continue indefinitely. The distribution site is staffed by volunteers conprofit Robert Wood nected to the hospital.

Johnson Foundation.

The program’s goal is to improve the lives banks and laundromats. of residents of southeast Sr. Capuano said that despite being Canton. Mercy Medical located in a different section of the city, Center is an anchor insti- Mercy has done many outreach initiatives in tution in the program. southeast Canton over the last 25 years. One is an annual oral health program for families Adopting an at the Allen school. ‘orphanized’ area A report by Canton More than meals Campbell Invest Health calls the James has ensured that the weekend southeast quadrant one of the “oldest and meal program addresses other needs of the most challenged communities in the city.” families it assists.

“The neighborhoods exist in extreme For example, when James noticed that poverty and are devoid of core assets that few of the people coming for meals had face contribute to quality of health,” the report masks, she organized a program to create says. “The area is best described in a U.S. and provide kits complete with materials Department of Housing and Urban Devel- and instructions on how to make the protecopment “Impediments to Fair Housing” tive coverings. “We had an area set up where report issued in June 2015 as ‘orphanized’ I showed the residents what was in the kit and (as) ‘an area of the city, which consists and showed them how to create the mask, nearly exclusively of areas of black concen- just in case they couldn’t read or compretration, is becoming increasing isolated hend,” James said. from amenities and services.’”

To build family cohesion, she arranged to Campbell noted that among the services offer board games as gifts to the children. the neighborhood lacks are grocery stores, Sr. Capuano said the games were a big hit. “We handed those out several weeks and the kids were delighted,” she said. “They got to pick out a game that they liked.”

The popular choice, she said, was the old classic Candy Land.

Every week, a truck from Mercy ferries dozens of meal packages to the distribution site. Sr. Capuano and her volunteer helpers also distribute food packages to families at Skyline Terrace. Forty more packages are delivered to Queen Esther’s Village, a senior community.

Community Benefit 101 is Going Virtual in 2020!

Community Benefit 101: The Nuts and Bolts of Planning and Reporting Community Benefit VIRTUAL

OCT. 27, 28 & 29, 2020 Each day from 2 – 5 p.m. ET

Who should attend: CHA is transforming its highly regarded CB 101: The Nuts and Bolts of Planning and Reporting Community Benefit program into a virtual conference that will provide new community benefit professionals and others who want to learn about community benefit, with the foundational knowledge and tools needed to meet today’s challenges.

What you will learn: Through video presentations, live chat and commentary provided by community benefit leaders, online opportunities to connect and more — CHA will provide the basics of community benefit, access to practical tools and resources, as well as timely public policy updates.

While it is designed for new community benefit professionals, the new virtual format now makes this meeting accessible to a wider audience, including:

vv Staff in mission, finance/tax, population health, strategic planning, diversity and inclusion, communications, government relations, and compliance who want to learn about the important relationship of their work and community benefit/ community health.

vv Veteran community benefit staff who want

a refresher course to update them on current practices, inspire future activities and connect with others in nonprofit health care doing this work.

WE HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE! LEARN MORE AT CHAUSA.ORG/COMMUNITYBENEFIT101

Joy in helping Since Mercy got the meal program rolling, more support for the families has come in. For example, Faith Family Church, a nondenominational church in Canton, began sending a truck loaded with groceries to distribute at the school and at Skyline Terrace.

The Mercy meals program initially had been set to run only until what would have been the end of the school year. However, the grant from the Sisters of the Humility of Mary is enough to keep it going for many more months.

That is good news not only for the families who receive the meals, but also for the Mercy group behind their distribution. They said seeing the need up close and being able to help out has brought them a sense of purpose in a troubling time.

Katie Simmons, a registered nurse who has worked at Mercy for 42 years, volunteered to help with the meal giveaway while she was furloughed from work because of the downturn caused by the pandemic.

“I look forward to Friday,” she said at the time. “It’s the day I get out.”

Simmons James said she has found joy at the weekly event. “It’s truly been a blessing to go down there and to really get to know the families and to know their names and to know their children,” she said. leisenhauer@chausa.org

August 1, 2020 CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD

7

Benedictine celebrates 35th anniversary with new name, identity

By LISA EISENHAUER

As it celebrates its 35th anniversary, Benedictine is refreshing its brand with a new name and identity and is dropping “health system” from its name.

Jerry Carley, chief executive of the Duluth, Minnesota-based system, said Carley the idea of rebranding has come up many times over the history of the Benedictine Health System. It wasn’t until its leaders were updating its strategic plan about 18 months ago that the idea gained momentum and support.

The leaders zeroed in on identity as one of the plan’s focus areas and having “health system” after Benedictine kept popping up as a stumbling point. “We looked at it and said that’s not even who we are,” Carley recalled.

He said “health system” has become associated with systems that offer acute care, which Benedictine has not provided since the end of 2007 when it spun off from its corporate parent, Essentia Health. What became important to Benedictine’s leaders,

he said, was to “make sure that new name and identity really portrays who we are as a stand-alone senior care provider of services in five states.”

Bold, flexible, familiar As the system began a months-long process of formulating a rebranding strategy, the leaders had up to 40 names under consideration. “When the dust settled, we ended up with Benedictine because it’s true to who we are.” Carley said.

“It’s a bold statement and it creates a tremendous amount of flexibility with what we can do with it, whether we’re talking about our assisted living, our skilled nursing, our transitional care units, our home health, our adult day care. It gives us all kinds of flexibility to co-brand everything around Benedictine.”

Along with the new name comes a new logo that features the name and the system’s legacy symbol, the circular Benedictine Cross. The system’s 33 communities in Minnesota, North Dakota, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois are being renamed Benedictine Living Communities with a city locator — for example, Benedictine Living Community – Bismarck (North Dakota).

Ready for a refresh Carley became Benedictine’s chief executive in 2018. He said he knew right away that a brand refresh was probably in order.

“One of the things I brought up, being a relatively new CEO with Benedictine, is, I said, ‘Gosh, I sure get a lot of phone calls from people asking me about my emergency

Having received a request from Sr. Cecilia Zavala, CCVI, the sisters helped to provide money for food at a similar camp in Ciudad Juarez, opposite the border at El Paso, Texas.

“Those were small things,” Sr. Durel said.

“But the need was immediate, and it was amazing to see the network move so quickly to fill the needs.”

Encouraging news from the Matamoros camp followed. As of mid-May, the field hospital remained empty. Though about 20 residents had been tested, none received a positive result. But on June 30, TIME magazine reported that a woman in the Matamoros camp had tested positive for coronavirus.

Aid to asylum seekers From page 1

Security. Announced early in 2019, the protocols forced most migrants seeking asylum to be returned to Mexico during their lengthy immigration proceedings, rendering several of the sisters’ missions in San Antonio less effective. Among them was an Interfaith Coalition program centered at the bus terminal, where the sisters and others would offer assistance.

Instead, asylum seekers from Central America who had been returned to Mexico flocked to a swelling tent city south of the border in Matamoros. Given that the situation in San Antonio mirrored the entire border and that the congregation had more than two dozen partners throughout Mexico, Peru and the U.S., the sisters decided to take a comprehensive look at how best to redeploy their resources.

“We realize that we have a lot of friends and ministries associated with us,” said Sr. Calzada. “We wanted to look at how we could expand our reach as a ministry.”

The sisters gathered about two dozen representatives from their partners and ministries, recruited equally from both sides of the border. The group, which included CHRISTUS Health, met from August through November, then set up a smaller Migration Task Force to initiate its Migration Crisis Call-to-Action Plan to address four areas: Education: Promoting an accurate and historical perspective of the global migration crisis. Their key partners include University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio and Universidad de Monterrey, both of which the congregation founded.

Health and Families: Providing for the basic needs of individuals and families along the migration pathway as well as upon arrival. CHRISTUS Health along with the universities and health care professionals will provide medical supplies and services.

Communication and Media: Developing tools on multiple platforms to share information about the migration crisis. This includes using the skill set of marketing and communication professionals from CHRISTUS Health and CHRISTUS Muguerza, the system’s Mexico region.

Legal Processes: Representing and advocating for just practices and resources for migrants and refugees through legislation and the courts.

Members of the task force presented the call to action at the congregation’s annual assembly in February, but the big picture and event horizon shortened a month later

For cities with more than one Benedictine site, the system will use legacy names or indicators of the site’s service line to differentiate between them.

The system’s name goes back to its start in 1985 and honors its sponsors, the Benedictine Sisters of St. Scholastica Monastery, Duluth. The system has evolved from its early days when it comprised two hospitals, a senior care community and clinical service sites.

Its biggest change came when Benedictine was spun off from Essentia Health, taking its long-term care facilities but leaving eight hospitals. Essentia Health, based in Duluth, includes 15 hospitals, some of which are members of CHA.

A worker sorts nonperishable food intended for refugees at a camp near Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, opposite the border near Brownsville, Texas. The Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word donated money to purchase the food.

with the growing threat of COVID-19 and related changes to asylum protocols. As Catholic Health World went to press, asylum hearings have been suspended until at least mid-July, and migrants wait through the summer heat in the crowded camps. Border closings and social distancing have further limited the sisters’ ability to provide goods and services in person.

Nimble response “Our thoughts turned to the refugee camp in Matamoros and what would happen when, rather than if, COVID hit the camp,” said Sr. Jean Durel, CCVI. “We asked, ‘What can we do?’”

The answer was to move quickly and nimbly through their ministries and network of partners to fill the short-term needs of camps all along the border.

With running water a precious commodity in the camp, Sr. Durel called on several partners in search of scarce hand sanitizer.

Though her connections were unable to help, she was impressed with their willingness, and the camp eventually secured a source through another agency.

Global Response Management, which built a field hospital to handle COVID-19 cases at the camp, also issued a plea to Sr. Durel for face masks, two for each refugee in the camp. Sr. Calzada, vice president of mission and ministry at the congregation’s University of the Incarnate Word, spread the call. The school’s theater department answered; the costume shop took the pattern supplied by the congregation from Mexico and made more than 1,000 masks.

Members and partners of the congregation from as far away as St. Louis also contributed to the project.

Conduits, connectors Sr. Calzada said it’s frustrating not to be able to do direct outreach with immigrants because of the coronavirus contagion risk.

“When we are talking about our migrant brothers, we want to be out there. But I live with at-risk people, so it’s been difficult to accept my role. It’s more like a desk job, which sounds inconsistent with what our mission among the migrants normally is.”

But the congregation’s rapid response to the immediate needs of the camps proved the effectiveness of elements of its longterm plan.

“So, we can see our role becomes being connectors,” Sr. Calzada said, “bringing people together, inviting people to be part of this, talking to each other about how to achieve the small goals as well as the big ones in our call to action. In one sense, there’s not a lot to report, but moving forward is where our hopes are.”

Among the longer-term goals that excite the sisters is a program in which students majoring in health professions and education at the congregation’s universities on both sides of the border partner with staff from CHRISTUS Health to address the needs of migrants throughout their journey.

“An immersion experience like this is one of the exciting projects to look forward to,” Sr. Calzada said. “That can only be done because CHRISTUS has a presence on both sides of the border.”

From their growing network of contacts, the sisters seem to embrace the role of gobetweens and conduits, breaking down borders between people who need services and those who offer them.

“There’s so much going on at the border, and the people willing to help on this side stretch from Washington, D.C., to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to St. Louis and Jefferson City, Missouri,” Sr. Durel said. “Even today, I added to my list because we continue to become aware of people who are not only collaborators but true partners.”

room department and we don’t have emergency rooms.’”

However, he doesn’t take personal credit for the rebranding. He said he and others even tried to stop the process a few times.

“We kept thinking ‘Is it really the time to do this?’” he recalled. “But the feedback just kept coming, (saying) let’s keep heading down this path.”

Carley said a soft launch of the rebranding began at the first of the year with the new name and logo starting to show up across the ministry. The process will continue for the rest of the year, as the new name and logo are phased in on signs, business cards and communications.

Legacy of quality care As with so many things this year, the rebranding process has been somewhat slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Dramatic challenges and an organizational focus on preventing the transmission of the virus delayed a planned late spring announcement.

Carley said the rebranding won’t affect how the system’s 6,000 employees deliver care to its 3,000 residents and patients or its core values of hospitality, stewardship, respect and justice.

“It just more aligns us with who we are, not necessarily that we’re going to be changing what we do,” he said. “We’re still going to be a high-quality provider of Catholic-sponsored senior housing and services in the United States.”

KEEPING UP PRESIDENTS/CEOS Lloyd H. Dean became Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health’s sole chief executive on July 1, following the planned retirement of Kevin E. Lofton. Dean has led CommonSpirit Health with Lofton since that organization was formed in February 2019. Dean had headed Dignity Health, and Lofton had headed Catholic Health Initiatives. Those legacy systems formed CommonSpirit.

Doug Ekeren to interim regional president and chief executive of Avera Queen of Peace Hospital in Mitchell, South Dakota.

He will succeed Tom Clark, who recently was named Avera Health chief strategy and growth officer. Ekeren also is regional president and chief executive of Avera Sacred Heart Hospital in Yankton, South Dakota.

Ekeren will continue in the executive roles for 18 months, as Avera evaluates the effectiveness of this management structure.

Darin Goss to chief executive for the Providence Health and Services Southwest service area, which includes Providence St. Peter Hospital in Olympia, Washington; Providence Centralia Hospital in Centralia, Washington; and the Providence Medical Group. Goss was chief operating officer of Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California.

Dr. David N. Maine to president and chief executive of Mercy Health Services of Baltimore, from executive vice president.

He replaces Thomas R. Mullen, who has retired.

Maine Facilities within St. Louis-based Ascension have made these changes: Scott Bruce to president and chief executive of St. Mary’s Healthcare of Amsterdam, New York, effective July 1. He was the hospital’s vice president of operations. He replaces Vic Giulianelli, who retired. Ed Lovern to health system president and chief executive of Ascension Saint Agnes in Baltimore, from chief operating officer at Piedmont Atlanta Hospital.

Mark Doyle to president and chief executive of Holy Cross Hospital of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, effective June 15. He was chief executive of Memorial Hospital Pembroke, Pembroke Pines, Florida.

8

CATHOLIC HEALTH WORLD August 1, 2020

Congregations From page 1

members are connecting in-person when they safely can, and also by phone, videoconference, social media, closed circuit TV, email and regular mail with patients and staff in the Catholic health ministry.

“We have a personal connection with these folks,” said Sr. Jayne Helmlinger, CSJ, general superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, in California. “We just want to support them, to provide a listening ear and to pray for them.

(Health care workers) are true heroes, and we want Sr. Helmlinger to help them to cope with what they are facing and help ensure they don’t succumb psychologically and spirituality” to the strain of practicing health care in a pandemic.

Sustained stress The Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange and the Sisters of Providence are founding congregations of Providence St. Joseph Health, which has 51 hospitals and a network of outpatient and long-term care facilities in seven Western states. The Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm sponsor or serve in 18 long-term care facilities in Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Ireland. The Congregation of Alexian Brothers is the founding sponsor of two acute care hospitals and six long-term care sites that are among the facilities Alexian Brothers Health System brought into a 2011 merger with Ascension.

And the Burlingame, California, province of the Sisters of Mercy has relationships with the four hospitals that province founded in two states.

Each congregation is connected with facilities that have experienced or continue to experience intense circumstances during COVID-19 caseload spikes. When hospitals and nursing homes closed their doors to all outside visitors in mid- to late March, staff took on the added weight of comforting frightened, ill and dying patients in their care.

“All of this takes an emotional toll” on the people in health care facilities, said Mother

founded. To avoid spreading the virus, some have reciprocated that healing for me — it active St. Joseph and Providence sisters has been inspiring and fulfilling” to visit have temporarily moved out of their health care staff, Br. Acosta communal living situations, or have said. altered their routines to avoid conBy early April several tact with other sisters. brothers had self-quaranBr. Dan McCormick, CFA, provintined after possible COVIDcial of the Alexian Brothers’ Immac19 exposure, but as of midulate Conception Province, said July no one in the order had some brothers never stopped visitcontracted coronavirus, ing legacy Alexian facilities that are said Br. McCormick. part of Ascension despite strict visiSr. Margaret McBride, tor restrictions.

RSM, is vice president, misBr. McCormick Sr. Fe Sumalde, SP, is sion integration, for Dignity said the brothers geared up in personal Health St. Joseph’s Hospifollow appropriate protective equipment tal and Medical Center in contagion proto- for her chaplain service Phoenix. She is one of four During the pandemic, Alexian Brother Torch cols, but it would be in Yakima, Washington.

Sisters of Mercy who live Acosta, at left, has continued his ministry of anathema to them in Phoenix and support encouragement with clients at AMITA Health to step back from ministry the hospital. Arizona’s coronavirus caseBr. McCormick Center for Mental Health in suburban Chicago. for their own safety. load exploded in late June and early July.

“We’re there to reassure people,” he said. Throughout the pandemic, Sr. McBride has M. Mark Louis Randall, “This actually is a big opportunity now” to continued to provide staff O CARM, prioress general illustrate the value of presence. and physician support, of the Carmelite Sisters for An article in the Spring 2020 issue of The work in the incident comthe Aged and Infirm.

Alexians newsletter reports that as COVIDmand center, help cover 19 began to spread in nursing homes, the the spiritual care departPower of presence Alexian Brothers collaborated with their ment and work with comThe provincials and namesake ministries in Elk Grove Village, Sr. McBride munity partners. other congregation mem- Illinois, Milwaukee and St. Louis to find She said she and other Mother Randall bers who spoke to Catholic appropriate ways for the brothers to pro- Mercy sisters are “in the thick of things” at Health World said much of the sisters’ and vide support, even if it was on a more limited their health care facilities. They’re keeping brothers’ activity during basis. a watchful eye on clinicians, encouraging the pandemic is focused on Brothers lead morn- them to take pauses and reflect, to have a meeting the emotional and ing prayers over a closed respite from the stress. They’re helping staff spiritual needs of ministry circuit TV network at process their grief. staff members. one residential facility.

Where possible, sisFollowing strict safety Connections ters and brothers who procedures, another Like many in the U.S., the Carmelite sishad in-person ministries brother distributes Holy ters are using video technology to continue at Catholic health faciliCommunion there. their work, including a program to teach ties prior to the pandemic Br. Torch Acosta has local parishioners to visit the homebound have continued that work, continued his usual and another that focuses on spiritual develobserving infection control visits to AMITA Health opment training for pastoral ministers who precautions.

Alexian Brothers Medi- work with the elderly.

“Most of our sisters are cal Center and AMITA One St. Joseph sister, Sr. Thuy Tran, CSJ, on the front line” of CarHealth St. Alexius Medi- has made it her mission to secure personal melite-sponsored nurscal Center, both in the protective equipment. She coordinated with ing homes, said Mother Chicago area, round- dozens of her contacts to sew more than Randall. ing to thank staff, from 30,000 masks. The masks went to hospitals, Likewise, several Proviclinicians to cafeteria medical groups, nursing homes, commudence and St. Joseph sisters Sr. Thuy Tran, CSJ, delivers homemade workers, and to provide nity health clinics and nonprofit organizacontinue to report to work masks to departments throughout them with spiritual care. tions — mainly in Orange County, Califorat hospitals or nursing St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California, “I had intended on nia, but also elsewhere in California and in homes their congregations in April. healing them, but they other states.

Sr. Tran also provided advice and access to connections for a Mission Hospital Mission Viejo nurse. That nurse and her family built a face shield-making cottage business more time for reflection during the lenging times. Some of the prayers and from the ground up in just several days. The pandemic. To promote conreflections are captured in a newsletter group the family assembled has produced templation, her Burlingame, the congregation created as the pandemic more than 25,000 face shields for use in hosCalifornia-based community, began. pitals and nonprofit agencies.

Congregations say ‘our faith is our edge’ in pandemic L

ike so many others around the world, sisters and brothers in the congregations that built the Catholic health ministry have largely been physically isolated part of the West Mid-West Sr. Helmlinger said in addition to prayfrom others as they follow pubgroup of the Institute of the ing for the safety of health care worklic health directives to shelter Sisters of Mercy, has hosted ers, the Sisters of St. Joseph pray with in place to reduce the risk of virtual retreats that are open to gratitude for the hospital and nursing contagion. anyone. home workers who are being the “hands Sr. Jayne Helmlinger, CSJ, The Institute of the Sisters and feet of Jesus” to the people who need general superior of the Sisters of Mercy and its West Midthem. of St. Joseph of Orange, CaliWest group have provided Mother M. Mark Louis Randall, fornia, says of the dozens of members across the U.S. with O CARM, prioress general of the Carmelite sisters who are sheltering in prayers and reflections that Sisters for the Aged and Infirm of New place in their own homes, pri- When someone asks for speak to this turbuYork, said the Carmelites marily in California, during the prayers, Sr. Mary Wilson, lent time. The instipray in solidarity with staff pandemic: “The social distanc- SP, writes the request on tute is encouraging in the Carmelite nursing ing is an act of love, done for sisters to write homes and all health care a paper heart that she the common good.” providers in New York, who keeps in a prayer basket about how they are Many of these women experiencing the during patient surges have at her home in Seattle. and men religious are using been overwhelmed and She includes those peti- pandemic. Some the increased at home time deeply exhausted as they tions in her daily prayers. of those essays are to intensify their prayer and being published in Sr. Annette Seubert, SP, prays cared for critically ill and contemplation practices, according to a the congregation’s ¡Viva! Mercy at this table in her apartment dying patients for weeks on sampling of congregation leaders who newsletter. The congregation is in Spokane, Washington. end. spoke to Catholic Health World. archiving all submissions.

The Carmelites also pray Sr. Barbara Schamber, SP, provincial Br. Dan McCormick, CFA, provincial of that the pandemic will help people everyleader of the Sisters of Providence’s the Alexian Brothers’ Immaculate Concepwhere appreciate that the frail elderly, a Mother Joseph Province, calls the pantion Province, said the brothers have been population that has been at the highest demic “imposed contemplative time.” praying for God’s intervention to end the risk for poor outcomes from COVID-19, Since the founding of their health care suffering connected with the novel corodeserve love, safety, compassionate care ministries, women and men religious have navirus and COVID-19. and respect always. supported their sponsored works with Sr. Schamber said the Providence Mother Randall said while the panprayer. Sr. Schamber was among congresisters have written prayers for an end to demic weighs heavily on the sisters’ gation leaders and members who said the pandemic. They pray on an ongoing hearts and minds, “We have faith that we those prayers have increased during the basis for doctors, nurses and other staff to can all get through this. We are all in this pandemic. be protected from harm. They pray for the together. Our faith is our edge, and we Sr. Margaret McBride, RSM, vice homeless and the working poor who work know that the Lord will provide.” president, mission integration, for Dignity in jobs that can’t be done from home and Health St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical for those who have lost jobs. They pray —JULIE MINDA Center in Phoenix, said there has been that good will come out of these chal-

Recharging the weary Sr. Helmlinger said the sisters know that some of the deepest needs of health care staff are spiritual, and those needs will go on long after the pandemic is over. She said, “We’ll continue to support them, to provide a safe place,’’ to hear their struggles and offer comfort and care. “They’ve been giving their all, and we’re here for all who come.”

The St. Joseph congregation provides prayers, meditations, readings and reflections for caregivers on social media and sends messages of encouragement to staff through the Providence St. Joseph Health corporate office.

Sr. Barbara Schamber, SP, provincial leader of the Sisters of Providence’s Mother Joseph Province, said Catholic health Sr. Schamber care has a long history of responding in heroic ways to the needs of the vulnerable. “Catholic health care is certainly called to respond to these times and is rising to that challenge.” With gratitude, the founding sponsors are doing all they can to support the people who keep the mission vibrant and vital.

To read about retired religious in residential care facilities during the pandemic, visit chausa.org/chworld. jminda@chausa.org