From the Broad Street Pump, to Call the Midwife, to the Ebola Crisis:  Partnerships in Religion and Public Health

Much of the research on religion and health has been focused at the individual level.  In clinical research the subjects are patients and the outcomes are measures of mental or physical health.  Even in population-based research, data on religion usually come from respondent reports in surveys, and outcomes also come from follow-ups of individuals.  But there is a whole other level on which action in religion and health is taking place – less recognized, but no less consequential and instructive.  In this lecture we will tell the stories of three such partnerships — two historical, one quite recent — in which religious institutions found common ground with public health authorities to accomplish population health improvements that neither could have achieved alone.

Presented by Ellen Idler, PhD, Director of the Religion and Public Health Collaborative and Professor in the Departments of Sociology and Epidemiology at Emory University.