SIOUX FALLS – Augustana College is hosting a healthcare and spirituality discussion on Friday, September 11, in the Morrison Commons 3-in-1 room. The discussion is open to the public.

Members of the panel include Margot Nelson, PhD, Chair of Augustana’s Nursing Department; Robert Tally, MD, Sanford School of Medicine; Philip Hefner, PhD, Lutheran School of Theology and former editor of Zygon; Jerome Freeman, MD, Neurosciences, Sanford School of Medicine; Ellie Schellinger, MA, Sanford School of Medicine, DeGroot Center for Ethics and Caring; and Mary Helen Harris, MD, Sanford School of Medicine.

Hefner, in an editorial written for the Lutheran Journal Dialog and addressing the ELCA statement addressing health, said: “The public discussion of health care reform in the United States has been driven by intense focus on practical issues: how to pay for care, the roles of private insurance companies and the government, how to ensure freedom of choice, how to limit unnecessary and expensive procedures. Largely untouched are some other, even more intractable questions that underlie these practical issues: How we view our bodies, our ideas of what constitutes health, and our attitudes toward dying and death. All of these are more difficult for us to resolve but they have a direct link to the practical issues that dominate the health care agenda, and genuine reform requires that we attend to them.”

“This panel has graciously agreed to field questions and help with discussion about how religion and medicine intersect in our health care crisis,” said Dr. Ann Pederson, Professor of Religion at Augustana.
 

Bruce Conley
Director, News Information
Phone: 605.274.5526
Fax: 605.274.4903
bruce.conley@augie.edu