On 18th October, many different churches and groups of Christians will mark the seventh annual Health Care Sunday. Focusing on the NHS in its 50th anniversary year, the aim above all is to stimulate prayer for such issues as:

• Christians rising above the low morale and sense of despair in the NHS
• Christian values returning in the UK - honouring my neighbour, putting others before myself
• all health professionals rediscovering the meaning of 'vocation'

However, Health Care Sunday has also over the years brought Christians together, from different disciplines in the same church, and from different disciplines in the same hospital or health centre. We need each other. We need to come together.

The 1991-92 meetings held by the different organisations which led to the first Health Care Sunday also led to other discussions about working together more effectively across the boundaries. We calculated confidently that at least 10% of the 1,000,000 or so people working within the NHS are Christians. That means there are 100,000 health professionals in the UK committed to following the Christian faith, yet between us, all the organizations around the table knew fewer than 10,000 of them.

Like the proverbial iceberg, nine tenths of the Christians in the NHS are beneath the surface, effectively submerged. Assuming it would be good to know who more of them are, and where more of them are, what can we do?

Well, the launch of this magazine a year ago was an intentional beginning. A year on we are reasonably pleased with the impact of the magazine but so far have only reached about 600 UK health professionals in total, in addition to the 4,500 doctor members of CMF who receive Triple Helix as a benefit of membership. Some of that 600 are already known to other organizations in the field.

What more then can we do? As a Triple Helix reader you could persuade a colleague to subscribe - there's a coupon very close to hand! You could use that handy coupon to make a gift subscription to a friend or colleague - Christmas is coming! You could subscribe to copies for libraries in your workplace or your church.

But subscriber lists alone are only a small part of the answer. Recognising that the other nine tenths of the iceberg are in the churches (at least sometimes!) there may be attempts to contact those Christian health professionals through the churches in the not too distant future. In the meantime, please continue forging links. If you're not already a member of the Christian health professional organisation that's right for you, think about signing up - see the list under 'Network News' in this edition. It's a big prize. Let's come together more, and have even more impact on healthcare in this nation. Don't forget, it was the iceberg beneath the surface that sank the Titanic!