JoyBioPicSmallerSize copy

Joy Kernicky

Joy Kernicky is a Physician Associate (PA) who served as a hospitalist in rural Kenya until 2021, when a health crisis unexpectedly brought her back to the United States. She then began a member care program for a healthcare worker sending agency and now provides spiritual direction, lay counseling, debriefing, and re-entry care for global healthcare workers.

Deeply aware of the emotional, mental, and physical toll of working in medicine and healthcare missions, Joy is passionate about creating spaces where people feel deeply heard, seen, and cared for. At MedRefresh, she provides teaching and spiritual care for participants throughout the retreat.

Joy and her husband live in North Carolina, where they enjoy gardening and walking their long-legged rescue dog.

Flourishing by Design: Imagining Medical Missions for 2040

Our predecessors faithfully built institutions that have served for generations. Our challenge is different. We have inherited those institutions into a world they could scarcely have imagined. Population growth, urbanization, changing disease patterns, financial pressures, conflict, climate shocks, and technological change are reshaping healthcare across low- and middle-income countries.

Drawing on new data about the Christian health ecosystem, strategic consultations with global and African Christian health leaders, and field experience across Africa and Asia, this session explores what it will take for Christian health ministries to flourish by 2040.

Together we’ll imagine what it will take for Christian health ministries to flourish by 2040, strengthening resilient institutions, cultivating exceptional local leadership, and mobilizing a broader range of Christian expertise from medicine and nursing to governance, education, engineering, finance, data science, and technology.

How can Christian health ministries become indispensable partners in building resilient health systems that reflect the compassion and hope of Christ? The legacy of the next generation of medical missions will be measured not only by the number of missionaries sent, but by the resilience, flourishing, and Christ-centered witness of systems they strengthen.