History
Adventist Health’s heritage dates back to 1866 when the first Seventh-day Adventist health care facility opened in Battle Creek, Michigan. There, pioneers promoted the “radical” concepts of proper nutrition, exercise and sanitation in a facility devoted not just to the healing arts but also to the prevention of disease. They called it a sanitarium, a place where patients and their families could learn to be well.
More than a century after Battle Creek, the health care system sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church operates 160 hospitals and nearly 500 clinics, nursing homes and dispensaries worldwide. From Michigan to California and throughout the West, this early vision to treat the whole person—mind, body and spirit—is the foundation for their approach to health care.
Originally, Adventist hospitals were governed by regional church leadership. As health care became more complex, however, the need arose for more time and specialized expertise than church administrators could give. In the 1970s the Seventh-day Adventist Church authorized centralized control and operations of its health care institutions at the Union (multi-state) level.
One-year later, regional divisions formed corresponding to the church’s infrastructure. These divisions were known in the North Pacific Union as Northwest Medical Foundation and in the Pacific Union as Adventist Health Services. In 1980, the two western entities joined to form Adventist Health System/West, now known simply as Adventist Health.
Today, Adventist Health is a not-for-profit, faith-based health system operating in California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. Founded on the Seventh-day Adventist principles of Christian health care, Adventist Health comprises 19 hospitals with more than 2,800 beds, nearly 18,000 employees, many clinics and outpatient facilities. It operates the largest system of rural health clinics in California, 15 home care agencies and three joint-venture retirement centers.
In 2009, Adventist Health secured $187 million in bond funding to pay for construction and improvements.
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—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)