CHA chair’s holiday message 2 Executive changes 2 Ministry’s holiday greetings 3-14 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
DECEMBER 2024 VOLUME 40, NUMBER 12
CommonSpirit institute focuses on putting human kindness into practice By LISA EISENHAUER
The Lloyd H. Dean Institute for Humankindness & Health Justice uses posts on social media to promote its work centered on the healing power of kindness.
The mission of the Lloyd H. Dean Institute for Humankindness & Health Justice is to bring to life a tenet of CommonSpirit Health —“Health justice starts with human kindness,” says the institute’s president. Dr. Alisahah Jackson has been at the helm of the institute since it was founded two years ago to honor CommonSpirit’s then-CEO as he neared retirement. She was formerly CommonSpirit’s vice president for population health innovation and policy. Lloyd H. Dean was one of two inaugural leaders when CommonSpirit was created in 2019 by the merger of Dignity Health, where
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‘One voice’
Age-Friendly Health Systems movement gains new momentum
Our Lady of the Lake’s gospel choir creates harmony across disciplines
By JULIE MINDA
A group of organizations that created the Age-Friendly Health Systems movement and has seen the practices put in place across the nation is working to spread the initiative to additional U.S. sites. The partnering organizations, which include CHA and some of its members, want to ensure that the nation’s aging population has access to high-quality health care that addresses elders’ oftencomplicated needs in a comprehensive way. The organizations are doing this through the Age-Friendly Health Systems movement founded by The John A. Hartford Foundation. Built up by the foundation’s longtime partner, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and supported by dozens of health systems and thousands of facilities, the initiative seeks to equip increasing numbers of health care providers to better understand and meet older patients’ wants and needs. Their focus is on the “4Ms”: what matters, medication, mobility and mentation.
he had been CEO, and Catholic Health Initiatives. The merger formed the nation’s largest Catholic health care system. Dean stayed in CommonSpirit’s top post alone when his co-CEO, Kevin E. Lofton, who had led CHI, retired in mid-2020. “When Lloyd Dean retired or made the announcement that he was retiring in 2022, there was a lot of conversation around what could we do to honor the amazing work and legacy that Lloyd has contributed over the span of his career,” Jackson recalls. Jackson says Dean was a longtime advocate of the healing power of kindness. She remembers hearing him expound on the
By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
CHRISTMAS BLESSING Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller blesses Christmas trees during a lighting ceremony Dec. 3 at CHRISTUS Children’s in San Antonio. Each department at CHRISTUS Children’s adds an ornament representing their respective areas to the hospital’s main tree. Each department also decorates a tree of its own. The hospital will donate the departments’ trees to Catholic Charities Archdiocese of San Antonio. The charity then gives the trees to families in need. HOLIDAY CREATIONS • CommonSpirit hospital staffers in Nebraska give donated canned
goods a festive spin. Story on Page 12.
Be careful if you get in the elevator with Cheryl Allen and start to hum. Allen knows a joyful noise when she hears it. She’s the director of the gospel choir at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, part of the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System. “I’ll take it as a God thing,” she says. “Right here in the elevator with me, you have a song in your voice?” she might say. And she might ask: “Do you want to join the gospel choir?” Allen, a senior generalist in human resources of environmental services, has directed the gospel choir, a volunteer Continued on 15
Medical respite facility supported by Sisters of Charity prepares for aging population By NANCY FOWLER
Kindred
Johnson
“The collaborative approach we’re taking helps patients feel the health system knows them and aligns with their needs,” says Kimberly Kindred, CommonSpirit Health system vice president of patient experience in the care continuum. IHI Senior Director KellyAnne Johnson says, “At the end of the day, it’s about older adults. They deserve care that is predicated upon what matters, and we as a health
Across the country, unhoused patients struggle to heal after being discharged by hospitals to shelters and the streets. They have no help with managing medications, locating dialysis and other equipment and keeping follow-up appointments. While their conditions range from diabetes to amputations to cancer, they all share a strong likelihood of ending up back in the hospital — again and again. In Cleveland, there’s another option:
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Visiting Nurse Paula Freeman-Vida checks the blood pressure of a resident at Joseph’s Home, a medical respite facility in Cleveland that serves men who are experiencing homelessness.