Introduction: What Should Public Health Students Be Taught About Religion and Spirituality?

Abstract

This chapter introduces the volume’s Part III, which contains chapter-length portraits of how seven top schools of public health are addressing religious/spiritual (R/S) factors in their educational offerings. This chapter also reports findings from national surveys of public health graduate students (n = 980) and public health school leaders (e.g., deans, n = 24).The history of public health teaching about religious/spiritual factors can be traced back several decades, but only now, with the emergence of a large and rapidly expanding inter-disciplinary empirical research literature on R/S and health, does the topic appear poised and ready for widespread inclusion in public health education. Completed surveys about R/S and health were obtained from 980 public health graduate students from 24 US-based schools and colleges of public health. A majority (53%) believed that R/S-health topics received too little coverage in their public health education. Respondents who had received more frequent educational exposure to evidence about relations of R/S factors with disease and longevity were significantly more likely to believe that R/S factors should receive coverage in public health training that is similar to the coverage of other well-established health factors. Similarly, of 24 deans or dean-designated respondents to a public health school leader survey, a large majority (20/24) agreed that evidence about R/S-health relations should be included in public health education. Enunciation of formal professional competency lists would be premature. But many resources are available to academic public health educators who wish to start new efforts or refine existing ones, including the seven following chapters.

Appendix: National Survey Methods and Participating Institutions

National surveys of attitudes of public health graduate students and public health leaders were conducted in Autumn 2013 after having received approval of the University of California at Berkeley Office for the Protection of Human Subjects. For each survey, we sought to disseminate materials to the 52 continental US-based schools and colleges of public health affiliated with the ASPPH (at that time called the Association of Schools of Public Health). We obtained respondents to one or both surveys from a total of 35/52 (67%) of schools and/or colleges, with responses to both surveys obtained from 13 schools (25%). Table 1 lists the 52 schools where invitations were distributed and the sites where responses were obtained.

Table 1 Source sites of participants in national surveys (✓ indicates participation)

To disseminate invitations to participate in the graduate student survey, we sought assistance from staff at each school, usually staff in a department of student services or student affairs (for neither survey were schools formal survey cosponsors). For the student survey, invitations were disseminated to public health graduate students via email, e-newsletter, or other means by staff at 24 (46%) of schools, and 980 completed individual responses were received. Student participants were nearly two-thirds MPH students (64%) and about one-fifth doctoral students (PhD, 17%; DrPH, 4%), with the remainder in a range of degree programs that include dual degree programs as well as programs leading to doctoral or masters degrees of science (e.g., in biostatistics). Respondents’ most common areas of specialization were epidemiology /biostatistics (28%), social/behavioral topics (20%), health policy/management (16%), and environmental health (7%). Slightly more than one-third (36%) were in their first year of studies, with a larger number in their second year (43%), and some also in third year (10%) or higher (10%). Respondents were overwhelmingly female (80%), with nearly half of respondents aged 25–29 years (42%), many also aged 20–24 (28%) or 30–39 (21%), and fewer aged 40 or older (8%). When asked “Which of the following statements comes closest to describing your beliefs?” respondents were almost evenly divided among those indicating they were “religious and spiritual” (33%), “spiritual, but not religious” (31%), and “neither religious nor spiritual” (29%), with only a small number self-identifying as “religious, but not spiritual” (5%) or skipping the question (1%).

Surveys of school leaders were emailed directly to each of the 52 deans, who were invited to respond themselves, or else to respond through someone that they designated. Completed leader surveys were returned from 24 (46%) of schools. Of the 24 respondents, 14 (58%) were deans, 7 (29%) were assistant or associate deans, two (8%) were faculty, and the role of one responder was unspecified.