Track Leaders

Debra Schwinn, Chair

Debra Schwinn is currently Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology and Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology & Genome Sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a practicing anesthesiologist, principal investigator of an NIH-funded molecular pharmacology laboratory where she studies adrenergic receptors and perioperative stress responses, member of the Institute of Medicine, and a national research leader. Debra earned her B.A. in chemistry from the College of Wooster (Ohio) and M.D. from the Stanford University School of Medicine, then completed her anesthesiology residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and clinical cardiothoracic anesthesiology and basic science fellowships at Duke University Medical Center. After a 21-year career at Duke, ending with her being the James B. Duke Professor of Anesthesiology and Director of Cardiovascular Genomics in the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, Debra moved in 2007 to the University of Washington in Seattle. During her career, Debra has held numerous faculty positions and had the opportunity to train and mentor many students, residents, and fellows. She and her husband, Bob Gerstmyer, have two teenage children and currently attend University Presbyterian Church in Seattle. In her spare time, Debra plays the violin and enjoys 19th century Russian novels.

John Bayon, Point

John Bayon has been on staff with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship in Detroit since 1990 and has served the Christian Medical and Dental Associations’ Wayne State and University of Detroit-Mercy chapters since 1999. He also leads a summer training institute for undergraduate students who move to Detroit to serve and learn about the poor. He has a degree in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan and is completing an M.T.S. degree, with an emphasis on Paul’s understanding of Christian identity, from Michigan Theological Seminary. John lives in Detroit with his wife, Cindy, six children, and one bullmastiff dog, Diego. They attend Ward Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Northville.

Program Summary

We are fallen people, disconnected and rootless. Many healthcare practitioners, even those who claim Jesus Christ as Lord and who originally entered medicine eagerly to be a vehicle for God’s work, may ultimately become ineffective in transforming medicine as a discipline. Why? Sometimes it’s because good works in the absence of inner transformation are hollow, even when they appear altruistic. Instead God uses people willing to be silent, to listen to Him, and to be transformed at the deepest level. Continual openness to God’s transformation is key to spiritual growth that refreshes and prepares us to care for others. Only this type of transformation leads to human flourishing.

The Healthcare track at Following Christ 2008 will address the theme of human flourishing on multiple fronts. We will discuss how professionals can flourish as individuals through rootedness and nourishment. We will talk about the pressures that training and delivery systems place on the spiritual, emotional, and physical wellbeing of providers, as well as offer practical ways to be integrated, whole people in the health profession. Such preparation allows us to truly focus on others in order to be used by God wherever he places us.

Having said this, post-Christian culture challenges the Christian understanding of healthcare with its expectations of an archetypal human wholeness through “medical miracles.” Is this really what human flourishing is all about? How might Christian understandings of healthcare, which incorporate human wholeness under Christ’s reign, look different? We will discuss ideas of wholeness and how these ideas affect our care for others.

Christian healthcare deliverers operate under the burden of caring and serving human health needs. They await God’s final resolution and presently see their service as integral to God’s providential reign. They experience the tension of living in the world of physical, psychological, and emotional suffering and waiting expectantly for the fulfillment of God’s promise to make all things whole and right. This has vital implications for systems of delivery and for wider, societal healthcare considerations. What does the reality of Christ’s present reign offer for shaping how Christian practitioners serve and influence the “big picture” of health care? What are possible strategies, challenges, and dreams we might attempt with our final Christian hope in mind? How does the promise of future health and wholeness affect our work toward current human flourishing? We will address all these questions in the Healthcare track. Come and join us.