Posted 1/11/2008

Two-year study aimed at understanding the relationship between religious faith and well-being

With a $200,000 grant from Duke University and the Templeton Foundation, researchers at the Arnold School of Public Health are beginning a two-year study to understand better the relationship between religious faith and well-being.

Dr. Robert McKeown, an epidemiologist and the study's principal investigator, said ample evidence exists to document the positive health effects of religious participation. However, less understood are the complex pathways that produce these broad health benefits and decreased health care expenditures.

McKeown's study entitled Understanding Social and Personal Aspects of Faith and Practice Related to Health, will probe those pathways by means of a series of in-depth interviews with three groups of adults over the age of 50:

• A racially diverse group of former participants who completed "Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength," a three-year program that McKeown designed for the South Carolina United Methodist Conference, with assistance of a number of Arnold School faculty members.
• A group of regular churchgoers unaffiliated with the HSMS program, and
• A secular group that is not active in a church.

All of the groups will be stratified by race to provide equal representation of African-American and Caucasian perspectives and experiences.

John Wesley "John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, taught that care for physical needs or health may be a necessary prelude to care of the soul. . . . The prospect of enhanced health and well-being and improved quality of life may suggest that involvement with others in social or faith-based groups is motivated by the benefits that can accrue to the individual from participation. On the other hand, many participants cite a sense of calling or desire to give to others or share with others as their motive. Even in the case of completely selfless altruism, however, the individual may experience benefits that were not sought. . . ." Excerpt from study proposal

McKeown, who also is a retired Methodist minister with a doctorate in theology from Duke, said the HSMS group would be the study's benchmark.

The HSMS program, supported by a Duke Endowment grant, paired groups of older adults from African-American and white congregations to meet together in a structured program that encouraged participants to increase physical and mental activity, and build emotional, social and spiritual bonds.

Holly Pope, a doctoral candidate in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior and program manager for the study, will use in-depth interviews to gather data on the health of participants in all of the groups, but giving particular attention to the HSMS participants.

The interviews will help establish whether the HSMS group had better health outcomes because the interaction - or "social bridging" - "exposed them to more health benefits or more health resources," Pope said.

The interviews also will gather information on subjects such as why HSMS members agreed to join the program, their relationships with others in the group(s) and trust levels among participants.

McKeown said a second objective of the study is to use the data from the interviews to develop a questionnaire that can be used in future research “that assesses objectively some of the aspects of social relationships in a way that can stand up to scrutiny from the scientific community but also in a way that respects the faith tradition.”

Besides McKeown and Pope, other investigators in the study are Carol B. Cornman, director of the USC Office for the Study of Aging, and Dr. Joshua R. Mann, associate professor of clinical family and preventive medicine at the USC School of Medicine.