Faith Community Summit on Pandemic Preparedness and Response:

June 20/21, 2007

The important role that faith groups will play during a future pandemic was underscored at the first-ever national Faith Community Summit on Pandemic Preparedness, which brought together healthcare experts, government officials and faith community leaders from across the country to talk about the role faith groups will play during a major health emergency.

What will happen when a pandemic hits? Summit participants received a glimpse of what it might look like from Lt. Colonel Irene Stickland, Vice President and Deputy CEO of Scarborough Grace Hospital in 2003—ground zero in Ontario during that year’s SARS outbreak. In particular, she suggested that faith groups need to develop communication plans to get information down to the congregational levels, and that congregations need to “plan ways they will help the sick in their congregations, and the elderly, people living alone.”

This audio recording includes the plenary sessions, presentations, panel discussions during this Summit. The stated goals of the Summit were to present the basic biology of pandemics and how they develop; to unpackage the particularities of pandemic planning; and to highlight the thorny ethical issues that congregations would face during a disease outbreak.