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Why Religion and Spirituality Matter for Public Health

Evidence, Implications, and Resources

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Editors:
  1. Doug Oman

    1. University of California, Berkeley, USA

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  • Shows how religion and spirituality are vital and necessary concerns for every major Public Health subfield
  • Describes evidence-based and theoretically-grounded approaches to research and practice
  • Shows how public health educators teach about religion/spirituality-health connections
  • Is a must-own “go-to book” for professionals and students

Part of the book series: Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach (RELSPHE, volume 2)

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Table of contents (28 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xviii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Elephant in the Room: Why Spirituality and Religion Matter for Public Health

    • Doug Oman
    Pages 1-16

  3. Evidence Base

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 17-17
      Download chapter PDF

    2. Reviewing Religion/Spirituality Evidence from a Public Health Perspective: Introduction

      • Doug Oman
      Pages 19-26

    3. Model of Individual Health Effects from Religion/Spirituality: Supporting Evidence

      • Doug Oman
      Pages 27-63

    4. Religious/Spiritual Effects on Physical Morbidity and Mortality

      • Doug Oman
      Pages 65-79

    5. Social and Community-Level Factors in Health Effects from Religion/Spirituality

      • Doug Oman, S. Leonard Syme
      Pages 81-110

    6. Social Identity and Discrimination in Religious/Spiritual Influences on Health

      • Doug Oman, Amani M. Nuru-Jeter
      Pages 111-137

    7. Environmental Health Sciences, Religion, and Spirituality

      • Doug Oman, Rachel Morello-Frosch
      Pages 139-152

    8. Infectious Diseases, Religion, and Spirituality

      • Doug Oman, Lee W. Riley
      Pages 153-163

    9. Public Health Nutrition, Religion, and Spirituality

      • Doug Oman
      Pages 165-173

    10. Maternal/Child Health, Religion, and Spirituality

      • Doug Oman
      Pages 175-189

    11. Health Policy and Management, Religion, and Spirituality

      • Doug Oman, Timothy T. Brown
      Pages 191-210

    12. Public Health Education, Promotion, and Intervention: Relevance of Religion and Spirituality

      • Doug Oman, Linda Neuhauser
      Pages 211-223

    13. Mental Health, Religion, and Spirituality

      • Doug Oman, David Lukoff
      Pages 225-243

    14. Clinical Practice, Religion, and Spirituality

      • Doug Oman
      Pages 245-260

    15. Weighing the Evidence: What Is Revealed by 100+ Meta-Analyses and Systematic Reviews of Religion/Spirituality and Health?

      • Doug Oman, S. Leonard Syme
      Pages 261-281

    16. Questions on Assessing the Evidence Linking Religion/Spirituality to Health

      • Doug Oman
      Pages 283-302

  4. Implications for Public Health Practice

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 303-303
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    2. Implications for Community Health Practitioners: Framing Religion and Spirituality Within a Social Ecological Framework

      • Rabbi Nancy E. Epstein
      Pages 305-322
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Keywords

About this book

This volume reviews the exploding religion/spirituality (R/S) and health literature from a population health perspective. It emphasizes the distinctive Public Health concern for promoting health and preventing disease in societies, nations, and communities, as well as individuals. Part I offers a rigorous review of mainstream biomedical and social scientific theory and evidence on R/S-health relations. Addressing key gaps in previous literature, it reviews evidence from a population health viewpoint, surveying pertinent findings and theories from the perspective of Public Health subfields that range from Environmental Health Sciences to Public Health Nutrition to Health Policy & Management and Public Health Education. In Part II, practitioners describe in detail how attending to R/S factors enhances the work of clinicians and community health practitioners. R/S provides an additional  set of concepts and tools to address opportunities and challenges ranging from behavior and institutional change to education, policy, and advocacy. Part III empowers educators, analyzing pedagogical needs and offering diverse short chapters by faculty who teach R/S-health connections in many nationally top-ranked Schools of Public Health. International and global perspectives are highlighted in a concluding chapter and many places throughout the volume.

  This book addresses a pressing need for Public Health research, practice and teaching: A substantial evidence base now links religious and spiritual (R/S) factors to health. In the past 20 years, over 100 systematic reviews and 30 meta-analyses on R/S-health were published in refereed journals. But despite this explosion of interest, R/S factors remain neglected in Public Health teaching and research. Public Health lags behind related fields such as medicine, psychology, and nursing, where R/S factors receive more attention. This book can help Public Health catch up. It offers abundant key resources to empower public health professionals, instructors, and students to address R/S, serving at once as a course text, a field manual and a research handbook.

Reviews

“The main theme in this engaging volume, which is both easy to read and understand, is how R/S relates to population health outcomes. … The focus on how religion and spirituality influence health outcomes, and on related learning and research, make this volume recommended reading across disciplines. … It is recommended for graduate and undergraduate students for understanding R/S as a dimension of health that interconnects with other sciences and health-related outcomes.” (Saneta Maiko, Reading Religion, readingreligion.org, January 11, 2019)

Editors and Affiliations

  • University of California, Berkeley, USA

    Doug Oman

About the editor

Doug Oman received his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley, where he is Associate Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health. His more than 60 professional publications focus especially on health and longevity implications of spiritual and religious factors, as well as related psychosocial factors such as compassion and altruism. Oman has been principal investigator for two randomized trials of nonsectarian and explicitly spiritual forms of meditation, and was elected President (2016-2017) of the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (Division 36 of the American Psychological Association). His 1998 paper, “Religion and Mortality Among the Community-Dwelling Elderly” was awarded the Templeton prize for Exemplary Paper in Religion and the Medical Sciences.

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