Religion & Spirituality Matter
for Public Health:
A Stakeholder Foundation for
Catalyzing Needed Integration
The Religion, Spirituality and Public Health Stakeholder Project was launched by the University of California, Berkeley, in August 2023, with funding from the John Templeton Foundation (link). We aim to catalyze improvements in how the US-based public health field understands and partners with communities of faith across the country, and how it understands religion and spirituality as factors that matter for public health.
Some key activities
- In late 2023 and in 2024, we will interview diverse leaders across the US who have orchestrated partnerships between public health and faith communities, as well as leading researchers on religious and spiritual factors and health.
- Several working groups of leaders drawn from public health and faith communities will be formulating recommendations for systematic action to improve public health capacity, skills, and interactions/relations with religious and spiritual communities.
We hope that you will support our work, and that we will have a chance to interview you if you are a leader in this area.
Our broader goal is catalyze and support improvements broadly within the field of public health: As public health responds (or sometimes fails to respond) to religion and spirituality through the activities of many interconnected organizations and institutions, including local and state health departments across the country; as it is reflected in instruction and research in dozens of US-based schools of public health; and as it is guided and supported by federal agencies
Project Leadership
- Prof. Doug Oman, UC Berkeley, School of Public Health (facpage), Project Leader
- Prof. Winston Tseng, UC Berkeley, School of Public Health (facpage1, facpage2), Project Co-Leader
- Morgan Vien, Project Manager
Email: morganvien@berkeley.edu
Executive Summary (as funded)
Improving relations of the US public health (PH) profession and religious and spiritual (R/S) communities is urgent in view of the COVID-19 pandemic, other impending PH crises, and increased political polarization and antagonism to PH officials. Such tensions exacerbate consequences of preexistent gaps in R/S knowledge of PH professionals, undermining PH workforce job effectiveness, especially with diverse US faith communities.
This project aims to catalyze culture change across the PH field via formative research and convening representatives of R/S and diverse PH stakeholder groups to envision and strategically formulate R/S and health promotion initiatives with leverage for mainstreaming recognition of R/S factors as a key dimension of diversity and fundamental driver of the public’s health. This proposal carries out planning activities (Phase I) to be followed by implementation (Phase II). The current project’s primary output is a detailed proposal for the Phase II implementation project, to be submitted to the John Templeton Foundation (JTF).
The present project applies an (unprecedented to our knowledge) comprehensive stakeholder approach to field transformation, focused on understanding and aiding three key categories of PH stakeholder: Schools of PH (SPHs), the PH workforce, and PH researchers. We do this with comprehensive involvement of a fourth primary stakeholder category (members of the faith community), and cognizant that each of the four preceding categories is heterogeneous, containing individuals who have grassroots-level roles as well as others who are gatekeepers (e.g., PH journal editors, clergy). For each of the four primary stakeholder categories, we interview key informants on perceptions and needs for addressing R/S factors, and interview individuals doing exemplary PH work that appropriately addresses R/S. For each of the three public health stakeholder categories, a subcommittee will formulate action options and priorities for supporting field transformation. In consultation with funders and others, prioritized strategies will be incorporated in the Phase II JTF implementation proposal or parallel linked efforts. Additional anticipated outputs are research reports of field transformation visioning activities, key informant interviews, and stakeholder analyses.