Key institutions of a Canadian Adventist healthcare system
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Rural sanitariums
Lifestyle centers located in country settings outside every large city in Canada. These Centers will engage in whole-person care (physical, mental, spiritual) with an emphasis on natural and lifestyle medicine.
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Urban clinics
Small clinics located in every city in Canada staffed by Seventh-day Adventist health professionals. These clinics engage in whole-person care (physical, mental, spiritual) with an emphasis on natural and lifestyle medicine. These are feeders to the rural sanitarium.
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Colleges
Post-secondary colleges to train Adventist young people in various aspects of adventist medicine and medical missionary work. These colleges will provide the clinicians to serve within the clinics and sanitariums of the healthcare system.
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Church plants
Small, health-focused Seventh-day Adventist church plants established in co-operation with the local conferences and within reasonable proximity to the clinics and sanitariums. The church plants provide on-going spiritual care for patients of the clinic and sanitarium.
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Plant-based restaurants
Vibrant plant-based restaurants in close proximity to the urban clinics. These serve as an initial connecting point to the public and can serve as feeders to the clinic, sanitarium and church plant.
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Organic farms
Agricultural operations provide the produce needed within Adventist healthcare systems. These farms can provide agricultural training for interested Adventists.
What is an Adventist Healthcare System?
General outline of an Adventist healthcare system
The three key institutions forming an Adventist healthcare system is the Sanitarium - Clinic - College unit. Clinics provide Adventist primary care in the cities and refer patients to the sanitarium for more intensive lifestyle and natural therapeutic intervention. Patients are referred back to the clinic for continuing care. The College trains the leaders and clinicians to staff the sanitarium and clinic.
Church plants should be established close to these institutions to provide on-going spiritual care of the patients.
Other operations such as farms and vegetarian restaurants support the work of the Adventist healthcare trio (Sanitarium - Clinic - College).
How extensive should the Adventist healthcare system be?
Adventist healthcare systems need to be established to effectively serve every community in Canada. In our view, and based on the counsel provided by Ellen G White, this would mean:
Sanitariums outside every large city in Canada
Clinics in every city
Enough Colleges to provide trained staff for the Sanitariums and Clinics
Churches established alongside the above entities to receive and disciple non-adventists
One large system or many smaller systems?
For efficiency and to minimize bureaucratic inertia, every institution ideally should be self-governing but working in close collaboration with other entities.
Purpose of the Adventist healthcare system
Adventist medicine is whole-person care of the physical, mental and especially the spiritual aspects of the individual. It involves not just health in this life, but preparation for the next life through a relationship with Jesus. Thus, if Jesus and the Adventist gospel is not encountered through the work of these institutions, then these institutions fail in their ultimate purpose.
Therapeutic modalities
It is our firm conviction that the counsels of Ellen White clearly and unequivocally calls for Adventist medicine to be primarily natural - lifestyle - spiritual medicine. Ellen White spoke against the drugs of her day, and as an alternative, suggested that lifestyle / natural medicine and trust in God are to be the primary interventions of Adventist clinicians. The scientific evidence since her time has corroborated the wisdom of her counsels. To use today’s pharmaceuticals while mostly neglecting lifestyle and natural therapies, is wholly inconsistent with Ellen White’s counsel to Adventists. Natural therapies, lifestyle medicine and trust in God ought to be primary interventions for Adventist healthcare institutions. Thus the healthcare systems established by Canadian Adventists should be unashamedly natural and lifestyle medicine in approach with the ultimate aim of directing patients to put their faith in the Chief Physician.