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

Most research on religion and health is focused at the individual level. In clinical studies, subjects are patients and outcomes are measures of mental or physical health. In population studies, religious data come from surveys and outcomes from follow-ups of individuals. But there is another type of religion-health connection -- less recognized, but no less consequential for researchers -- in which religious institutions partner with public health agencies to accomplish population-health objectives neither can achieve alone.

Dr. Ellen L. Idler is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Sociology, Professor of Epidemiology, and Director of the Religion and Public Health Collaborative at Emory University