Health Care Forum to Cap Year of Public Meetings

California Health Decisions--Orange County Project, the grass-roots effort to involve the public in ethical issues in health care, will hold its Health Care Parliament Sept. 13 at the Orange campus of Loyola Marymount University.

The parliament is the culmination of the project’s first year of activities that included more than 200 public meetings throughout Orange County involving more than 4,000 people. They addressed such issues as whether people have the right to health care and what categories of health care should have priority when it comes to funds.

At the parliament, suggestions from the community meetings will be used to formulate recommendations for those who provide health care, those who pay for it and those who guide public policy. Issues will be identified for further study and committees will be formed to move the recommendations toward implementation and to develop ways of involving more people in the project’s continuing efforts, organizers said.

Participants will include leaders of Orange County’s community-based organizations, representatives selected during the project’s community meetings and others from the legislative, business, medical and educational communities.

California Health Decisions, a nonprofit organization, was co-founded in 1985 by Sister Corrine Bayley, vice president of the St. Joseph Health System in Orange and director of its Center for Bioethics, and Ellen Severoni, a registered nurse, who serves as project director.

Last year California Health Decisions was awarded one of six nationwide grants by the Prudential Foundation’s Local Decisionmaking-in-Bioethics Program. The project, which is co-sponsored by the Center for Bioethics at the St. Joseph Health System and the Orange County Health Planning Council, also has received financial support from hospitals, foundations, professional organizations and businesses in the county.