The Religion, Health, and Medicine Program is an initiative that fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and conversation between faculty and students at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health. Research topics include: public health, health policy, global health, ritual and medical practice, chaplaincy and spiritual care, gender and sexuality, religion in clinical practice, religious communities and illness, disease, and suffering, and perceptions of the body.
The Program on Religion, Health, and Medicine is oriented around six themes that broadly combine the strengths and interests of faculty committed to participation. The project themes include: 1) developing spiritual care interventions within medicine, 2) exploring the intersection of psychiatry and spirituality, 3) engaging clergy and religious communities in the ways that they care for the sick, 4) identifying how institutions and socialization processes reflect and reinforce spiritual norms, 5) analyzing unexplored relationships between religion and public health outcomes, and 6) studying the complex relationship between race, religion, and health. To meet the overarching goals of our program, we will maintain a broad portfolio of empirical research and educational endeavors aimed at the intersection of religion, public health, and the practice of medicine.
Sponsored by:
Harvard Medical School
Harvard School of Public Health
John Templeton Foundation