Mennonite Health Journal

This issue of Mennonite Health Journal  focuses on the theme of Mennonite Healthcare Fellowship’s Retreat 2012: Integrated Healthcare: Many Gifts, One Purpose.  Integrated healthcare can mean many different things.  Readers will get a taste of some of the issues discussed at Retreat 2012, held June 29 to July 1, at Laurelville Mennonite Retreat Center.

Paul Leichty, MHF Executive Director, reflects in his editorial on the interaction between the societal concerns of professional healthcare providers which surfaced at Retreat 2012 and the personal and family concerns that come our way regardless of our profession.

The lead article by John Wenger, D.O. is entitled Integrative Medicine: It’s just good medicine. Out of his experience in a two-year residency at the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, John commends an approach that emphasizes overall health and disease prevention and integrates conventional medicine with alternative therapies that have evidence of efficacy and safety.

At the opening plenary session of Retreat 2012, Jone Friesen, R.N., led a panel of persons who earlier gave leadership in the formation of Mennonite Healthcare Fellowship (MHF).  Their reflections, entitled An Integrated Anabaptist Healthcare Organization: The Gifts and Challenges for Mennonite Healthcare Fellowship, are distilled into an article.

Stan Reedy, M.D., offers some further reflections on the timing and implications of the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the Affordable Care Act in his President’s Column.

Finally, we turn to “Integrated Healthcare” at a very personal level as we feature the heart of the Retreat 2012 Sunday morning sermon by Jim Leaman, M.Div., M.A., called Faith, Health and Community: An Integration.  Jim, who is Secretary of Mennonite Chaplains Association, draws on Jesus’ own healing ministry as a model.

PDF Version of full Journal:  MHJ 2012-07

About the author

Paul D. Leichty, M.Div. was the first Executive Director of Mennonite Healthcare Fellowship (MHF), serving from Sept. 2011 through May 2020.  Paul has served as a pastor, church musician, computer support person, disabilities advocate, and administrator/organizer of a number of church-related ministries. In addition to responsibilities at MHF, Paul is Executive Director of Congregational Accessibility Network and was formerly Director of User Services at Mennonite.net.  He is a member of Agape Fellowship of the Mennonite Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania where he lives with his wife, Twila Charles Leichty.