Why Religion and Spirituality Matter for Public Health
Evidence, Implications, and Resources
Editors: Oman, Doug (Ed.)
Free Preview- 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
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- About this book
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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.
- About the authors
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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.
- Reviews
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“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)
- Table of contents (28 chapters)
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Elephant in the Room: Why Spirituality and Religion Matter for Public Health
Pages 1-16
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Reviewing Religion/Spirituality Evidence from a Public Health Perspective: Introduction
Pages 19-26
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Model of Individual Health Effects from Religion/Spirituality: Supporting Evidence
Pages 27-63
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Religious/Spiritual Effects on Physical Morbidity and Mortality
Pages 65-79
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Social and Community-Level Factors in Health Effects from Religion/Spirituality
Pages 81-110
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Table of contents (28 chapters)
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Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Why Religion and Spirituality Matter for Public Health
- Book Subtitle
- Evidence, Implications, and Resources
- Editors
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- Doug Oman
- Series Title
- Religion, Spirituality and Health: A Social Scientific Approach
- Series Volume
- 2
- Copyright
- 2018
- Publisher
- Springer International Publishing
- Copyright Holder
- Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature
- eBook ISBN
- 978-3-319-73966-3
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-319-73966-3
- Hardcover ISBN
- 978-3-319-73965-6
- Series ISSN
- 2627-6011
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XVIII, 476
- Number of Illustrations
- 6 b/w illustrations, 2 illustrations in colour
- Topics
