Fall 2022, Issue 7, p. 20
[Online 4 Nov. 2022, Article A036]
[PDF]

Editors’ Introduction: Fall 2022 Issue #7

We are pleased to share with you the seventh mini-issue of the PHRS Bulletin. This issue opens by profiling the Caucus on Public Health and the Faith Community, a caucus within the American Public Health Association (APHA), and one of the best places within APHA and its meetings to meet others concerned with religion, spirituality and health, and learn more about these topics. This profile is written by Barbara T. Baylor, chair of the caucus, who was also interviewed in our previous Bulletin Issue #6 (Spring/Summer 2022). Guest speakers at next week’s Caucus events will include David Satcher (former US Surgeon General), and Howard Koh (former Assistant Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services).

A second article is from Julissa Soto, a Colorado-based public health leader whose work on vaccination promotion has won many accolades. Her article is structured as her responses to a series of questions, such as “How did your work begin?”, “What does it mean for you to work at the ‘intersection’ of religion and public health?” and “How do you navigate tension points that can emerge when faith and public health work in partnership?” In contributing this article she is pioneering a new genre of article for the Bulletin – a genre that we hope you find enjoyable, informative, and useful for navigating your own faith/health “tension points” – and a genre that, if successful, might be a vehicle for featuring the contributions to spirituality and public health of an ever-expanding circle of colleagues.

Our third article features an interview dialogue with Dr. Mimi Kiser, for many years a leader of Emory University’s teaching on faith and health, and deeply involved with its Interfaith Health Program since 1993 when the program began at The Carter Center. After three decades in the field, and in dialogue with her former student Dr. Stephanie Doane, Dr. Kiser reports that she has “never seen [as] many federal agencies take religion as seriously as they did during COVID-19, investing staff and programmatic resources… it has been phenomenal.”

Finally, in our resources article, we present some of the latest research at the intersection of religion, spirituality, and public health, as well as upcoming conferences and funding opportunities. We also alert you to a newly published book on the history of a “spiritual dimension” of health within the World Health Organization (WHO) – a history beginning at the WHO’s inception after World War II – and, according to the book, closely connected with many of the organization’s ethical aspirations.

We wish you all a wonderful fall and winter and look forward to sharing with you our next mini-issue, currently targeted for publication in late spring.

Warmly,

The PHRS Editorial Team
Angela, Ashley, Kate, and Doug

Angela Monahan, MPH
angela.grace.monahan@gmail.com
Assistant Editor

Ashley Meehan, MPH
ashleymeehan20@gmail.com
Assistant Editor

Katelyn Long, DrPH
knlong@hsph.harvard.edu
Coeditor

Doug Oman, PhD
dougoman@berkeley.edu
Coeditor