by
Michael Culliton
GLP
Associate
Can
Dialogue Education help build public will for the transformation of healthcare
in the United States?
A two-year-old collaborative is living into
this question. I have been working with a team who recently piloted a six-hour
design that engages diverse community members in a structured, values-based dialogue
about U.S. health care. The process is designed to engage more people in this
vital conversation and to give them tools for approaching it from both a values
perspective and with a dialogic posture-as opposed to the technical/expert-based
perspective and posture of debate that characterize much of the current discussion
of health care.The project, titled
"The Future of U.S. Health Care: What Do the People Want?" was
made possible by a generous grant from Allegany Franciscan Ministries, Inc., of
Tampa Bay, Florida, and is a collaboration among the Center for Clinical Bioethics
at Georgetown University Medical School, the Center for Healthcare Reform of the
St. Joseph Health System, Orange, California, and NETWORK Education Program (NEP)--the
education partner of NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby-in Washington,
DC.
As an NEP staff member, I worked with the project team to develop
and conduct the eleven pilots.
Encouraged by the results, our team is
preparing to publish the materials and make them available for community use in
the Autumn of 2005. At they same time, we are working to develop a network of
organizations who will sponsor high-profile regional dialogues in late 2005 and
into 2006. For more information on the project, you can contact me at mculliton@networklobby.org.
<<back
