President's Message
The conference theme addressed "Coming to Know Our Unique and Wonderful Differences" as the caring foundation for acceptance of cultural diversity in the new millennium.  Embracing and celebrating differences can be a catalyst for each of us to advance caring in our evolving world. - Kathleen Valentine

Conference Chair Letter
The theme of the conference was Cultural Diversity for a New Millennium.  The conference highlighted various cultures and diversity was punctuated with the annual Fiesta de Flores celebration of the Riverwalk barge parade, ceremonies, music, concerts throughout San Antonio. - Dr. Donna Taliaferro, Chair

Conference Committee

1999 Recipient of the Leininger Human Care Research Award
Dr. Tamara George
Title of Study: Meanings and Expressions of Mental Health Care of Midwestern Dutch-Americans

Conference Sponsors
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio
School of Nursing
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
School of NursingUniversity of Texas Tyler and Palestine CollegeSigma Theta Tau
Delta Alpha Chapter
UTHSCSAUniversity of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston
Hermann Hospital, Houston, Texas
Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas
Texas Women's University, Denton, Texas

Conference Objectives

1. Explore the development in research of human caring.
2. View cultural diversity within the unfolding patterns of knowing a person.
3. Understand the significance of knowing one's own patterns in reading and responding to the other's pattern of being.
4. Describe what it means to be a reflective practitioner.
5. Examine the meanings of faith, health and cae within cultural contexts so as to promote global awareness and cultural openness.
6. Propose strategies for the new millennium so as to foster the human potential to live with peace and justice in caring, healthy communities where cultural diversity is honored.

Conference Program: Pre-Conference Workshop
Cultural Diversity, Caring and Healing Among Native South Texas Cultures

PLENARY SESSIONS

1. The Reflective Spiral of Knowing Self as Caring
2. Considering Caring as the Sacred Path for the New Millennium
3. Global Perspectives on the Interface of Culture, Faith, Health and Care
4. Knowledge Breakthrough in Transcultural Nursing Care Research
5. The Healing Art of Storytelling
6. Presidential Address:
   Endowing the Continuity of Caring: Looking Back, Moving Forward

CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Philosophical Inquiry

1. Living in an Ethic of Nurturance
2. To Mold One's Life: The Importance of the Virtues to a Person's Health
3. The Lived Experience of Nurturing the Wholeness of Persons Through Caring

Understanding Self

1. Helping Out: An Intentional Gift of Self
2. Connecting to Nurse-Self Through Reflective Story, Poetry and Art Making
3. Caring Presence: Reflecting Understanding of Story Using Aesthetic Modes

Student/Self Perspective

1. Nurses' Caring Practices and Major Structural Changes in Health Care System:
   A Canadian Relational Caring Inquiry
2. Caring for Childbearing Korean Women: A Self-Care Perspective
3. Short-Term Grief Response Following Induced Elective Abortion

When Caring is Difficult

1. Encounters Between Aggressive Patients and Caregivers
2. When Screening and Referring are not Enough: Caring as an Essential Element in the Treatment of Battered Women
3. Cross Currents: Against Cutural Narration

Global Caring Community

1. Yup'ik of Southwestern Alaska: Viability of Traditional Care Beliefs at the Millennium
2. Culture as Collective and Separate: Exploring Symbolic and Archetypal Images of Caring Through Myth

Caring in Clinical Setting

1. Having Gone Through Coronary Surgery
2. Parenting and Caring in a Children's Ward
3. The Eye Patient's Caring Reality: A Phenomenological Study of the Patient's Experiences from Suffering and Caring

Mental Health Perspective in Caring

1. Meanings, Expressions, and Experiences of Care of Chronically Mentally Ill in the Community
2. From Iron Gaze to Nursing Care: A Philosophical Analysis
3. Caring in Communion and Loneliness - How Relatives Experience Care of Seriously Ill Patients at Home

Caring Models in Education

1. Nursing Education Model: Caring from a Christian Cultural Perspective
2. Embracing Care: Ethics Education for Nurses
3. Caring: It Can be Taught and Evaluated

Practice

1. Role Modeling: How to Step into your Patient's Shoes
2. Animals in Health Care: Animal Assisted Activities and Animal Assisted Therapy

Research

1. Synthesizing Research: Integrating Studies to Develop Nursing Knowledge
2. Cultural Influences on Research

Education

1. The Nurse as a Healer
2. Congregational Health Nursing

Jean Watson’s book Postmodern Nursing and Beyond was released by Churchill Livingstone. The work is truly an inspiration for those nurses who work from a caring/healing paradigm. As Ed Coakley, Director Emeritus at Massachusetts General Hospital commented: "She articulates postmodernism and nursing so clearly. The best I’ve read and a joy to see her thinking of the future of nursing." Jean is also the recipient of the 1999 Norman Cousins Award from the Fetzer Institute for her contributions to caring in nursing and healthcare. This award recognizes outstanding leaders whose vision, creativity and leadership has great impact on fostering relationship centered care. Congratulations Jean!

As I breathed in the views of the Alamo, the excitement of the annual fiesta and the wonderfully welcoming and joyous ecumenical service that opened the 1999 International Association for Human Caring Conference in San Antonio, I knew that I was destined for a truly educational and culturally expanding experience. How fitting this was, the theme of this years conference, which centered around cultural issues in caring, was well placed in this city.

The conference, which was opened by Christopher Johns and Jean Watson, set the scene for as many diverse presentations as their were people in attendance. During the course of the conference we were able to participate in experiential workshops and concurrent sessions, to witness in flight dancing and feast on Tex/Mex whilst enjoying the local music. This was all supplemented by a number of 'caring' booths I found myself melting into the experience of a therapeutic hand massage. These caring moments, they were given with love and I observed many emotive carers/nurses struggling to receive this small gift of appreciation for themselves.

Amongst the many well know names in caring presenting at the conference, Madeleine Leininger , Anna Frances Wenger, Gwen Sherwood. We were privileged to see a photographic display of the history of caring prepared bygone of the graduate students at UT San Antonio.

On the final day we were treated to a day in the life of the storyteller as Angela Cay Klingler told us about the healing power of story. What better way to draw the conference to a close than to honor the power of story in a city that has at its heart one of the most compelling stories in the world’s history
.- Dawn Freshwater

R E M N A N T S    R A R E Fragments of a feast foretold feather, flower, glimmer gold Mere ghosts of what was yesterday a bright Fiesta – swept away Pinata – like our hearts collide hibiscus-sweet rewards inside Bold steps toward new clarity reclaim faith, hope and charity New raimants from old cloth reweav’d new stories told; old ones retrieved In caring search we journey on to know ourselves and be reborn Hearts beat the stronger with the years as life propels us to new spheres where Celtic stillness reappears - Esther Condon	[left to right] Kathleen Valentine, outgoing president of IAHC, welcomes Zane Wolf as president of the Association. Madeleine Leininger, founder of the IAHC, autographs posters at the San Antonio conference