By Gary Gunderson

The lack of a space between the words Faith and Health in our name is a bold confrontation with ever-more-technological medicine. Every hospital in America is rushing to embrace new “population management” schemes built on software and analytics to guide patients toward the optimal blend of services to assure their health. This seems like an obviously good thing to try to do, but only if it builds on an understanding of a human being that is far more than a medical patient.

Fourfold view of health

When anyone in FaithHealth says “health,” we always — every single time, in every single context — mean the utter and seamless weave of bio/psycho/social/spiritual dynamics. None of those facets make any sense or can be engaged without the others.

This fourfold view of health is still a minority view within the world of hospitals, public health and even primary care that is now being woven into the continuum of services. And this is an inconvenient view that slows down the confident herd of technologists busily wiring the community with predictive analytics and navigational schemes. In the same way that chaplains have often served as an inconvenient voice for humanity inside the hospital. They don’t just pray over the beep of the machine, but see the whole of the life and the family and healing team all at the same time. They see more and see it more integral.

So, too, is FaithHealth an inconvenient voice for community on the other side of the sidewalk. It is why we see patterns of health care that fail predictably along the same lines that justice fails. And we see the lack of mercy for entire neighborhoods that persist for year after year.

The fourfold lens on patients, families and neighborhoods fuels hope as well as anger; it helps us understand and trust the tenacious resilience that simply won’t give up on the unfinished work of God’s intentions for health and wholeness. That’s what we want to give ourselves to. What grown-up person of faith would not?