1. Cultivating Interfaith Action
What it means:
▪ Maintaining an atmosphere of mutual respect and dialogue - without denigration or proselytization.
▪ Seeking the greatest common factor. Focusing on areas of agreement rather than areas of conflict. Avoiding all sectarian controversy.
▪ Welcoming partners who are religiously unaffiliated but abide by other ethical principles.
What it does NOT mean:
▪ Requiring partners to abandon particular faith tradition truth-claims. The Network operates according to a practical pluralism.
▪ Denying or ignoring substantive areas of disagreement among network partners.
▪ Condemning practices involving apologetics or proselytization among faith traditions. We only insist that the Network is not the proper sphere for these activities.
▪ Accepting automatically all partners/organizations/individuals who wish to participate. We reserve the right to exclude organizations and individuals whose values and/or activities are inimical to the Network’s principles or values.
2. Adopting a Population Health Framework
What it means:
▪ Prioritizing policy/systems/environment change (PSE) over individually-focused programs and educational interventions for Network purposes.
▪ Supporting a shift away from the U.S. “hyperfocus on healthcare” and “rescue treatment” toward an upstream approach to public health where “populations are the patient.”
▪ Focusing primarily on the underlying determinants of health: social, commercial, environmental, and political.
What it does NOT mean:
▪ Devaluing the work of our health care partners, especially in their role as integrators and anchor institutions working toward improved population health.
▪ Ignoring and failing to support individually-focused projects and programs with strategic and synergistic public health value.
3. Advocating for Social Justice
What it means:
▪ Affirming social justice and health equity as indispensable components of public/population health.
▪ Aligning with efforts which address the social determinants of health.
What it does NOT mean:
▪ Excluding legitimate opportunities for collaboration with organizations and individuals with differing philosophical perspectives.
▪ Engaging in partisan political activities.
4. Relying on Science in Context
What it means:
▪ Recognizing science as a sacred instrument, and the necessity for public health interventions and policy strategies to be science-based.
▪ Grounding our support for public health interventions and strategies in the most reliable scientific sources – especially systematic reviews and meta-analyses from high-level, reputable bodies without commercial conflicts of interest.
▪ Ensuring also that the “diverse forms of knowledge, especially the oft-undervalued knowledge held by non-scientists, are respected and included in population health science.”
What it does NOT mean:
▪ Taking a top-down approach, whereby outside experts impose their will on communities, “as if [population health] is something that can be done to a passive community, sort of like one might do liver surgery on an anesthetized patient.”
▪ Failing to appreciate the distinction between the instrumental value of scientific endeavor and the moral and ethical issues inherent in the application of science.
5. Working Toward the Common Good
What it means:
▪ Calling on faith partners and their allies to counteract systemic greed and embrace a community-centered ethic to ensure healthy and just communities.
▪ Acknowledging the rejection and denunciation of greed and corruption at the individual and systemic levels as a commonality among the world’s great faith traditions, and recognizing these social evils as structural impediments to health and community well-being.
▪ Maintaining our freedom from commercial conflicts of interest, with special care taken to avoid any entanglements with health-harming industries.
What it does NOT mean:
▪ Failing to appreciate the benefits that businesses (especially smaller, more local businesses and businesses that provide legitimately “thick” value ) can provide in producing wealth and social good in our neighborhoods.