April 22, 2010 | Session Three

Healthcare and Immigration Issues

Tarcisia Roths Alumni Center (inside the Dugan Library and Campus Center)

Breakfast @ 6:45 a.m.

Panel @ 7:15 a.m.

Join panelists Fran Betzen Cook,  Marlene Dreiling, and Deborah Snapp as they take up a variety of issues related to the complex intersection of healthcare and immigration, and the challenges that lie therein.

Panelist Bios

• Fran Betzen Cook, LSCSW, Director, Catholic Charities Help Center and Immigration Services

Fran Betzen Cook, LSCSW

Grew up in Wichita and obtained a BSW from Avila College in Kansas City in 1999 and a MSW from Newman University in 2000.

For the past 10 years she has served at Catholic Charities in a variety of roles including counselor, staff supervisor, and currently as the Director of the Help Center and Immigration Services.   Her passion is in serving the poor and in ending oppression.

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• Deborah Snapp, LBSW, Executive Director for Catholic Social Service in the Diocese of Dodge City

Has been employed with the agency since 1987, starting as a Social Worker, before becoming Program Director in 1991 and being appointed as Executive Director in 2006. In addition, Debbie also serves on the board of directors of The Crisis Center in Great Bend, is a committee member of the South Central Kansas Tornado Recovery Organization, and active with many diocesan functions. Before moving to Dodge City in 1980, she received a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work and a Bachelor’s Degree in Family Life and Human Development from Kansas State University. Debbie is also a strong advocate for adoption, as she and her husband adopted two sons through the adoption services of Catholic Charities.

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• Marlene Dreiling, Executive Director Guadalupe Clinic

• John McCormick, Associate Professor of Theology, Newman University

John McCormick

Dr. McCormick is an Associate Professor of Theology in the Department of Theology and Philosophy and Director of the Liberal Studies Program. McCormick joined Newman in the Fall of 1996. His academic interests include the areas of Sacraments, Church, and Catholic Social Teaching.

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April 15, 2010 | Session Two

Perspectives on the Relationship between Healthcare and Financing

Cardinal Newman Room (lower level of Sacred Heart Hall)

Breakfast @ 6:45 a.m.

Panel @ 7:15 a.m.

Join panelists Dr. Ed Hett, Lynette RauvolaBouta, Michael Murphy as they discuss questions related to healthcare and financing, including: How do reimbursement practices affect models of care? How would you re-envision the future?

Panelists Bios

• Dr. Ed Hett, family practitioner

Dr. Ed Hett

A native of Marion, Kan., Ed Hett, MD, received his undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences at Tabor College, and his Medical Degree in 1981 from the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita. He completed his Family Medicine residency at St. Joseph Medical Center in 1984. That same year he opened a private practice, Twin Lakes Medical, which joined Preferred Medical Associates in 1997 and became PMA Twin Lakes, where he continues to practice part time.

Dr. Hett was named president of Preferred Medical Associates in 2001.

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• Lynette RauvolaBouta, Senior Vice President, Mission Integration, Via Christi Health

Lynette RauvolaBouta

Lynnette RauvolaBouta (RAU voh la boo TAY) joined Via Christi Health System as Vice President, Mission Integration in September of 2004.

She is responsible for ensuring mission integrity in Via Christi Health System structures, policies and procedures. This includes seeing that VCHS follows the integrity of the mission set forth by the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Wichita, the health system’s sponsoring congregations.  It also includes ensuring that VCHS facilities follow the ethical and religious directives for Catholic health care services.  RauvolaBouta designed the health system’s Mission Integration Plan, including church relations, community accountability and advocacy, organizational and clinical ethics, ministry leadership formation and spiritual (pastoral) care.

Prior to joining VCHS, RauvolaBouta served as executive leader of sponsorship for the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Agnes in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. She served as executive vice president for mission integration in the Benedictine Health System in Duluth, Minnesota, and was vice president of operations at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Brainerd, Minnesota.

She has held a number of positions on the boards of healthcare, long-term and senior care facilities and is an accomplished organist.

RauvolaBouta holds a master’s in healthcare administration from the University of Minnesota, a master of arts in theology from St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, and a bachelor of arts in religious studies from The College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota.

• Michael Murphy, President and CEO, Coventry Health Care

Michael Murphy

Michael joined Coventry Health Care of Kansas in May of 2008 as President and CEO.  Prior to joining Coventry, Michael previously held the position of President and CEO with  Mercy Health Plans in St.  Louis.  Prior to being named CEO for Mercy Health Plans, he served in various operating roles within the organization including Chief Operating Officer, Vice President of Operations and Vice President of Government Programs.  Prior to joining Mercy Health Plans, Michael founded, owned and served as President and CEO of Managed Prescription Services (MPS), a national Pharmacy Benefits Management company headquartered in St. Louis.  MPS was later sold to Humana.  Michael has also provided Management Consulting services.  He received his Bachelor’s degree from St. Louis College of Pharmacy in 1979 and his MBA from Washington University – Olin School of Business in 1996.

April 8, 2010 | Session One: Whose Responsibility Is Health? Whose Responsibility Is Healthcare?

What are the relationships between individual responsibility and social responsibility with regard to health and healthcare? What are the advantages/disadvantages of single payer and multi-payer systems?

• Panelists

Beverly Gossage

Beverly Gossage, the Director of HSA Benefits Consulting, is a Consumer Driven Healthcare Consultant and HSA specialist.

In addition to training and writing HSA policies for individuals and the self-employed, she helped pioneer them for businesses in Kansas and Missouri. The first small business that Beverly helped with one of these plans was a plumbing company in Lawrence owned by her family. Since that time, she has reduced health insurance premiums for individuals and businesses across the Midwest.

As a consultant and trainer for businesses with self-funded health plans, Beverly advises HR departments in all areas of health benefits, including the plan designs and premium comparisons, HSA contribution levels, anticipated participation percentages, account custodian and TPA evaluation, strategies for mitigating trend in utilization, and implementation of employee benefit education.

For more information about Beverly Gossage and HSA Benefits Consulting, please visit their website: http://www.hsabenefitsconsulting.com/about/

Msgr. Robert Hemberger, Vicar General, Diocese of Wichita

Msgr. Robert Hemberger

I attained a Masters in Theology from the Catholic University of America in 1970.  Ordained to priesthood in 1970.  I served in hospital chaplaincy from 1973-1982 at St. Francis and Halstead Hospital.  I attained a Licentiate in Canon Law in 1985.

I have served at the diocesan ministries as Chancellor, Vicar General, Judicial Vicar, Moderator of the Curia, Liaison for Health Affairs, on the Boards of Catholic Care Center since 1998, Via Christi Health System since 2001, and Newman University since about 2005.

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Chris Fox, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy, Newman University

Chris Fox, Newman University

Professor Fox received his masters and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Memphis. Since arriving at Newman in 2004, he has published articles and translations in areas related to contemporary Continental philosophy, Hegel, globalization, and the philosophy of religion. He is the 2006-07 recipient of the Newman University Teaching Excellence Award. In addition to Vital Issues of Philosophy and Ethics, Fox also teaches God and Cosmos, Social and Political Philosophy, History of Modern Philosophy, and Existentialism.

Paula Huston

Huston will link her reflections on forgiveness to current debates about capital punishment. Her lecture is the latest in a series of presentations sponsored by the Gerber Institute on the theme “Reconciling Differences.” Click on the link to the right to see all related events and posts.

In Forgiveness, Huston asserts that Christ’s injunction to forgive without measure is central to Christianity, and is not merely an option but a requirement. Copies of Forgiveness and other works by Huston will be available for purchase at the reading, courtesy of Eighth Day Books.

A popular speaker and retreat leader, Huston often appears at conferences, bookstores, churches, and other venues to speak on the topics of forgiveness, simplicity, and prayer, and the practice of the virtues. She has been a Newman Lecturer for several universities and has appeared on public radio stations and cable TV. In addition to Forgiveness, she is the author of The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life, a personal narrative about her struggles to incorporate into her life some of the practices of a contemplative monastic community in Big Sur, California.

7-9 p.m. – Free

Dugan-Gorges Conference Center, Newman University Campus

Speakers

• Sr. Therese Bangert, SCL
• Fr. James Billinger
• Sue Norton, member of Murder Vicitims’ Families for Reconciliation (MVFR)
• Kristi Smith of Kechi, Kan., member of MVFR

Panelists will each provide 10-15 minutes of remarks, followed by a moderated discussion incorporating both prepared questions and questions from the audience.

Ron Hansen has written several award-winning books, including Exiles, Atticus, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction. Hansen has received many literary awards and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as fellowships in literature from the John Simon Guggenheim, Lyndhurst, and Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest foundations. He has held numerous teaching positions at prestigious universities around the country, and been awarded honorary doctorates from several Catholic colleges, institutes and schools of theology. He earned a master’s degree in Spirituality at Santa Clara University, where he is currently the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor in the Arts and Humanities. In 2007, he was ordained a permanent deacon for the Diocese of San Jose.

Biography

Ron Hansen was born, with his twin brother, Rob, in Omaha, Neb., on Dec. 8, 1947. Educated in English literature at Creighton University, from which he graduated in 1970, he served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., then studied under highly respected writers John Irving and John Cheever at the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop, where his classmates included T. C. Boyle and Allan Gurganus. Iowa awarded him an M.F.A. in Creative Writing in 1974.

While traveling Illinois as a textbook salesman for Random House, Hansen began work on his first novel, Desperadoes, writing much of it in motel rooms at night, and finishing it under the guidance of John L’Heureux at Stanford University, where he held a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship. Hansen was a Jones Lecturer in Writing at Stanford when Desperadoes was published in 1979, and has since held numerous teaching positions at universities around the country while publishing his subsequent work: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (1983), a children’s book, The Shadowmaker (1987), a book of stories, Nebraska (1989), and the novels, Mariette in Ecstasy (1991), Atticus (1996), Hitler’s Niece (1999), and the screwball comedy Isn’t It Romantic? (2003). He has also edited two short story anthologies, You Don’t Know What Love Is (1987) and You’ve Got to Read This: Contemporary American Writers Introduce Stories That Held Them in Awe (1994). A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction, his first book of non-fiction, was published in 2001, and his most recent novel, Exiles, about Victorian-era priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and the 1875 shipwreck of the Deutschland, was published just last year.

Hansen has twice received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as fellowships in literature from the John Simon Guggenheim, Lyndhurst, and Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest foundations. Twice a finalist for a PEN/Faulkner Award, for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and Atticus, he was also a finalist for the 1997 National Book Award for Atticus. Mariette in Ecstasy won the fiction prize from the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association and the Gold Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California. Exiles was a finalist for the same award. Hansen’s novels and stories were recognized with an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1990.

Married to the writer Bo Caldwell, and the step-father of two children, Hansen has been awarded honorary doctorates from Spring Hill College in Alabama, Le Moyne College in New York, the Saint Thomas Aquinas Institute in St. Louis, the Thomas More College of the Liberal Arts in New Hampshire, Loyola College in Baltimore, Md., and the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, Calif. In 1995 he earned an M.A. in Spirituality at Santa Clara University, where he is now the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor in the Arts and Humanities. On Jan. 13, 2007 he was ordained a permanent deacon for the Diocese of San Jose.

From L to R: Bishop Eugene Gerber, Sr. Tarcisia Roths, ASC, Fr. Robert Schreiter, C.PP.S., Dr. jamey Findling. Photo by Kelly Snedden.

Biography

Robert Schreiter is Vatican Council II Professor of Theology at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, and directs the Program in Reconciliation and Peacebuilding at its Cardinal Bernardin Center for Theology and Ministry. He also serves as theological consultant to Caritas Internationalis in the Vatican for programs in peacebuilding. He has lectured and led workshops on peacebuilding around the world and is considered one of the world’s leading authorities on the subject. Among his books are “Reconciliation: Mission and Ministry in a Changing Social Order” and “The Ministry of Reconciliation: Spirituality and Strategies,” both published by Orbis Books. He is a priest and member of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood.