A legal corporation founded in 1893 under the name Seventh-day Adventist Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association (renamed International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association in 1896). It was dissolved in 1904. The association aimed to promote the medical activities of the denomination and to hold the properties of the church’s medical and charitable enterprises. The objectives of the association, specifically, were “to erect and manage homes for orphan children and for friendless aged persons, also hospitals and sanitariums for the treatment of the sick poor and others, the same to be either self-supporting or supported in whole or in part by funds secured for the purpose; to establish dispensaries in cities, medical missions at home and abroad, visiting nurses’ work, Christian Help work; to educate missionary physicians and nurses; to provide for the needy poor; to promulgate the principles of health and temperance and to do good in a variety of ways” ( Yearbook of the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association, 1896, pp . 58, 59).
Although the association was intended to be a holding corporation for the several Seventh-day Adventist sanitariums and other enterprises, in practice it became a consultative body with a constituency composed of the General Conference Committee, presidents of local conferences, several men appointed for two-year terms by the General Conference in session, all donors of $1,000 or more to its treasury, and delegates from the various sanitariums and subsidiary organizations. On the administrative side, it became the employing agency for the Seventh-day Adventist medical missionaries. Dr. J. H. Kellogg was its prime mover and president. The activities of the association were taken over largely by the Medical Department (now Health and Temperance Department) of the General Conference that was created in 1905.