Life-affirming healthcare

This year marks 140 years since a brave handful of Benedictine Sisters founded the first hospital between Minneapolis and Seattle, bringing Catholic healthcare to North Dakota. Today, the city of Bismarck and the surrounding region is still served by CHI St. Alexius Health, a deeply impressive legacy. Sanford Health and Essentia Health also serve our community’s vital healthcare needs, along with many smaller, independent clinics and practices. We are all so blessed to have ready access to such good care.
 
Now, partly in response to the specific need for Natural Family Planning and fertility education, and to enhance options for dignified, life-affirming medicine, Bishop Kagan has invited Bella Health + Wellness to establish a small clinic in Bismarck, in partnership with the University of Mary’s Saint Gianna School of Health Sciences. There is a beautiful story behind this development.
 
Just over 10 years ago, two women, a mother and her daughter, were in a small village in Peru, high in the Andes Mountains. Both nurse practitioners, these women had come on a medical mission to serve the people of that distant and poverty-stricken region. All day they had seen, spoken with and cared for women, men and children who had walked five, 10 or 20 miles to seek their help. Now, they stood on the roof of one of the village’s few buildings, praying and remembering the faces of everyone they had seen that day—people who, in their poverty, had glimpsed something in those two women, something in the way they took a child by the hand, or looked a grandfather in the eye or listened to a mother speak. And as they prayed together, one turned to the other and said: “Mom, I think we’re supposed to start a clinic back home.”
 
These two women are Dede Chism and Abby Sinnett, and when the Lord called them that day, their answer was a determined “Yes!” That joy-filled “Yes!” is still ringing today, and their small clinic in Denver, Colorado, has transformed into Bella Health + Wellness. Bella has grown beautifully in the years since then and is ready to establish a second clinic—here in North Dakota. 
 
In the complex and ever-changing world of healthcare, women’s health and obstetrics are particularly fraught, caught up in the most high-stakes questions of respect for life and the human person. The State of Colorado has some of the nation’s most extreme laws supporting abortion and abortifacient contraception. Despite this, Bella began as a faith-filled OB-GYN practice, committed to holistic, life-affirming care and firmly rooted in the moral and social teachings of the Catholic Church. Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the sheer courage of Dede and Abby, this little clinic quickly began to grow, today providing a variety of healthcare services for men and women of all ages. As the clinic has expanded and developed, Dede and Abby have always kept a firm grasp on their mission: to provide medicine worthy of the dignity of the human person to anyone who walks through the door.
 
For many years, the University of Mary’s Saint Gianna School of Health Science has sent medical missions of students and faculty to the very same village in the Andes Mountains where Dede and Abby first heard their calling. The mother-daughter duo has been firm supporters of our Christian, Catholic, Benedictine mission and advocates for the University of Mary in Denver, even enrolling Abby’s daughter (and Dede’s granddaughter) in our nursing program. It’s deeply moving that now they feel called to expand their ministry into the community of Bismarck, serving the Catholic community here and working collaboratively with our existing medical centers for referrals and other opportunities for cooperation.
 
Bella Bismarck is scheduled to open its doors this coming August. A member of the University of Mary’s nursing faculty, Dr. Brittany Kudrna, will be the new clinic’s director. Dr. Kudrna’s years of experience as a family nurse practitioner and specialized training in Natural Family Planning and fertility education will serve her well in her new role. 
 
For more information about Bella Health + Wellness, and for updates on the expansion to Bismarck, visit bellawellness.org. If you are able to support Bella Bismarck or wish to learn more about the clinic and its specialized mission in our community, you are invited to a social and information session from 5:30 -6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 10 at the University of Mary’s Casey Center for Nursing Education. 
 
Let’s keep all the generous and self-giving men and women who serve our community’s healthcare needs—as nurses, physicians, therapists, administrators, or support staff—in our grateful prayers.