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Planning for Pandemic Flu		  
  Responding Faithfully to Pandemic Flu

Throughout the span of the church’s history and life, the faithful have sought to care for the needs of many. For this reason, it is appropriate to envision how this church would respond faithfully should pandemic flu affect our communities. This discussion paper is offered to assist congregations to consider the many issues raised by news and information about the threat of pandemic flu in the world. Congregations include health professionals, local governmental servants, pastors, and concerned individuals who are already becoming involved in this kind of planning. What follows is an invitation to envision ways to faithfully respond to the needs of communities in a time of pandemic flu. Congregations are encouraged to openly discuss these issues as a means of exploring their particular calling and opportunities for service should pandemic flu occur. Even if this particular threat never happens, planning and preparedness for responding faithfully during any public health emergency can be very valuable.

Some particular areas of consideration include its impact on congregational life, this church’s role in health care, and the opportunity to join the conversation on political and governmental concerns.

Congregational Life

The richness of congregational life nurtures the baptized community in so many ways. Especially in hard times, all gather strength and hope from the gathered congregation, the proclaimed word, and the sacraments. These avenues of grace support us tremendously. These avenues of grace should be sustained and even expanded during a time of such challenge.

Scenarios of responding to pandemic flu involve public health directives discouraging public gatherings during times when flu is judged to be most virulent. The decision to temporarily suspend gathering publicly as a component of cooperating with public health initiatives is ultimately a decision that belongs to local congregations. In our Lutheran tradition, we cherish the depth of church life found in local congregations. Each congregation has its own unique mood and personality, unified in a joy for gathering publicly to worship. These decisions will require significant moral and ethical discernment to balance the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of the community.

The church has wisely utilized innovative technologies throughout history in service to its mission. Just as mass printing presses were quickly utilized to produce bibles, we can also look to innovative technologies to serve our needs if ever faced with a pandemic flu. Myriad communication options exist that could be adapted to gather as many people as possible for a sense of community. The following guide gives specific examples and techniques that can be pursued to create such creative communication channels. Additionally, these same options for communication could be used to provide pastoral care to individuals and groups, an expression of the church’s caring that would be essential if faced with the anxieties and fears that may accompany such a crisis. Even under difficult circumstances and bolstered by the hope that dwells within, there is a nurturing word of peace to people dwelling in anxiety.

Health Care and the Church

The church has long played a leading role in caring for the sick in times of plague and pandemic. During the earliest days of the church, Christians nursed and cared for each other and their wider community during times of epidemic.¹ During the great plague of the Black Death in the 1300’s, when there weren’t hospitals, clinics, and public health departments such as there are today, the church provided the care that saved many lives. Congregations often served as places for the sick to receive care and comfort. They opened themselves up to care for those that others neglected.

This legacy of care will be even more evident in any future health crisis because the tradition of this church has embraced the mission of health care in important ways. The ELCA and its predecessor church bodies have founded and support numerous hospitals, long term care communities, and other social ministry organizations committed to health care ministries. In any future health care crisis, as in times past, this church will serve the health needs of the community.

There continues to be a role for congregations to play in supporting public health responses in our time. For example, if requested by local communities to provide space to enhance community response to caring for those affected, congregations could choose to become partners in this care. Congregational members could also have opportunities to provide practical help and pastoral care, as health care and church professionals or as volunteers.

Public Health Issues

Pandemic flu preparedness, while linked into governmental structures associated with security and defense, remains principally a healthcare issue. Thus an important guide for this church’s response is the ELCA Social Statement “Caring for Health: Our Shared Endeavor.” This ELCA Social Statement envisions how this church, as a part of the larger community, can support public health initiatives.

Health as a shared endeavor makes public health services, which focus on the population as a whole, the foundation for any health care system. We urge renewed political and financial support for services undertaken on behalf of the entire community to prevent epidemics, limit threats to health, promote healthy behavior, reduce injuries, assist in recovery from disasters, and ensure that people have access to needed services. Governments have an obligation to provide or organize many of these services, but all services depend on active collaboration with the entire community (Pg. 13).

This statement acknowledges the government’s role in providing for this manner of preparedness, and invites us to collaborate as leaders in our communities. Indeed it implies that the government will depend on collaboration to meet this obligation.

Political Issues

Recently federal, state, and local governments have been communicating activities of preparedness for a potential pandemic flu and are urging families, businesses, churches, and other organizations to do the same. This is taking place within the context of heightened national security where the connection between national security and public health care needs are both complicated and complex. It is appropriate therefore that this church carefully assess the nature and urgency of the threat as it determines its participation in preparedness activities.

The ELCA’s social statement “The Church in Society: A Lutheran Perspective” challenges us that:

This church must participate in social structures critically, for sin is at work in the world. Social structures and processes combine life-giving and life-destroying dynamics in complex mixtures and in varying degrees. This church, therefore, must unite realism and vision, wisdom and courage, in its social responsibility. It needs constantly to discern when to support and when to confront society's cultural patterns, values, and powers (Pg. 3).

We work to discern therefore whether pandemic preparedness is an activity to “support” or “confront.” This church shouldn’t be co-opted into supporting a political agenda at odds with its mission; neither should this church neglect its responsibility to support a “life-giving” activity which is the purpose of pandemic flu preparedness.

There are therefore, key distinctions to consider between matters of national security and issues of public health. When challenges to our common welfare and public health emerge, this church has committed itself to partner with all structures, governmental and non-governmental to respond meaningfully.

Governmental Issues

It is important to nuance the roles and responsibilities of governmental structures, especially with respect to public health initiatives. Different levels of government have different roles and obligations in pandemic preparedness planning.

Public health concerns are chiefly the domain of local governments like states, counties, and municipalities. Decisions about local public health issues are made by local public health officials, even when the issues are national and international in scale and scope. As leaders in their communities, faith leaders should work collaboratively with public health officials on issues that affect the shared endeavor of health care.

Were pandemic flu to affect our communities, local public health officials will have difficult decisions to make about how to best protect their local communities. These decisions could involve discouraging public gatherings during particularly virulent stages of a pandemic flu. Another tool public health officials can use against virulent disease is quarantine. Quarantine means restricting persons, families, or sometimes communities to specific locations while a disease is considered highly contagious. The power to do this kind of quarantine rests on the state level in the United States. Decisions to do this kind of temporary quarantine will be made by local public officials with consultation and recommendation by public health officials.

The Federal Government has the authority to quarantine the national borders, and to restrict international travel but does not have the authority to quarantine individuals or communities on the local level.

Preparing for the Future

This church encourages congregations and leaders to engage in preparedness planning for pandemic in their communities and support local public health officials and political leaders in this endeavor. The federal government has asked the faith community to take the lead in preparing to provide for the spiritual and emotional needs of communities in pandemic.² Many bishops and pastors have begun work preparing their synods and congregations to lead their communities in this preparedness.

In the event that some future pandemic flu presents challenges to public health, we trust that congregations and their leaders will discern meaningfully what the most faithful response would be, living out a responsibility to serve and protect the physical and spiritual needs of our congregations and the community. The ministry of the ELCA’s Domestic Disaster Response will continue to serve this church in preparing for pandemic flu and all potential disasters.
 

¹  The Rise of Christianity, Rodney Stark, 1996, Princeton University Press, pp 73-94.
²  National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, pg. 193, www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/nspi_implementation.pdf.

 
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