According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, 71 percent of Americans believe in God or a universal spirit, and 80 percent of Black Americans and 61 percent of Latinos say these beliefs are very important in their lives. There is.
“This may be particularly important for those of us interested in reducing health disparities,” said Alexandra Shields, HMS associate professor of medicine and director of the Harvard-MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations, and Health Disparities. , “Spirituality, Health, and Health Disparities Symposium” held at Harvard Medical School on December 4, 2014.
Read more news about HMS here
“We cannot afford to ignore the potential impact of spirituality and religion on health,” says Shields.
If people resist treatment because they are putting themselves in God’s hands, can religious and spiritual beliefs have a negative impact on health status? Or can spiritual beliefs and hopes be used to support healing? Can it be actively leveraged? These were the questions Shields and other speakers discussed.
Focus of symposium sponsored by Harvard University Catalyst’s Health Disparities Research Program | The Harvard University Center for Clinical and Translational Sciences plans to encourage further research into the health effects of spirituality and religion, the initiative’s co-founder says. Director Shields said.
One of the goals of this symposium was to build bridges among Harvard faculty already engaged in this type of research through discussions with epidemiologists, theologians, public health researchers, psychologists, and sociologists in attendance. The goal was to start building.
Experts from across the United States and Harvard University who attended included researchers working on the challenge of measuring spirituality and those studying the biological pathways by which spirituality functions, including stress management and mindfulness techniques. This included researchers who
A story of spirituality and health
Unlike most academic symposiums, this gathering featured a personal approach to the spiritual and sacred, including a Jamaican nun, an African-American pastor who is also a former pediatrician, and a Buddhist monk with a Ph.D. It began with stories told by spiritual leaders who shared their awakenings.
Sister Marie Chin shared a transformative experience she had while attending the United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995. At first, she said, she heard stories of women’s cruelty, oppression, and suffering that left her in despair.
And she realized that by telling their stories, “all women’s pain was shared and made a little more bearable.”
Many of the women may not have thought of themselves as attending church, but by sharing their stories, Chin said, “they can tap into what’s rising inside them. In other words, I felt a deep sense of power, a power beyond myself.”
Speaker Gloria White-Hammond described how she felt a call to ordained service 20 years ago while working as a pediatrician at Boston’s South End Community Health Center. Told.
“I learned a lot about myself as a spiritual being through my medical practice,” White-Hammond said.
White-Hammond described the case of a five-year-old girl with leukemia as a powerful reminder that a cure is about more than just saving a life. In some cases, she said, it may be necessary to exercise her compassion to ease the pain.
She said the girl suffered so much from the treatment that one day she said she didn’t want it anymore. She said the child just wants to go home. Her nurses threw a party in her room with cake, party hats and singing. She said the girl prayed to God and God told her she would go to heaven to see her grandmother and that she would never be sick again.
“So we’re having a party, she told me,” White-Hammond recalled.
Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi, founding director of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, entered a Buddhist monastery in India at the age of 10. He came there, he said, drawn by dreams of mountains and people wearing saffron robes.
“Spiritual experiences are as real as the moment you wake up,” he said. “Like love, kindness, compassion, fear, and wonder, these powerful experiences have stories, but no indicators.” He says secular and religious life tend to be polarized. added.
“Life has both, and people just don’t pay attention,” he says.
So how can researchers and health care providers capture this elusive, multidimensional aspect of life that changes over the course of a person’s life?
“It’s like trying to recreate Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with a whistle,” said Kenneth Pargament, a psychology professor at Bowling Green State University. But there are currently hundreds of measures that seek to do just that, he added.
Researchers from Duke University, the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and the University of Liverpool described a survey instrument they developed to create these measurements.
new approach
Andrea Vaccarelli, Mark Winkler and Katherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Epigenetics at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, proposed viewing spirituality through an epigenetic lens.
DNA methylation is one of the epigenetic mechanisms that alters the behavior of genes. If methylation does not go well, it can cause disease.
Vaccarelli said that through the Black Women’s Health Study, they found that a history of child abuse was associated with increased methylation levels of the glucocorticoid receptor pathway in the hippocampus.
“The effect was somewhat attenuated for women who received emotional support during childhood.” Baccarelli Said. “Does spirituality also regulate methylation? This should be studied,” he added.
Additionally, the relaxation response pioneered by Herbert Benson, professor of medicine at the HMS Mind/Body Medicine Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, and mindfulness techniques such as repetitive prayer, yoga, and meditation, have been shown to improve physiological and psychological health. There is also growing evidence that it can cause change.
Twia Liberman, HMS Associate Professor of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, described his team’s multiple studies on the effects of mindfulness techniques on gene expression in immune system response pathways that are also associated with stress. .
religious factors
Neil Kraus, a speaker at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, said more than 3,000 studies have shown that religion has potentially beneficial effects on health.
Faith in God creates hope, which is linked to positive physiological changes, Kraus said. Those who regularly attend religious services benefit from a community that helps members cope during difficult times, he added.
Others discussed how religion can play a role in youth interventions related to drug and alcohol use and in improving smoking cessation rates among African Americans.
Tracy Balboni, HMS associate professor of radiation oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, cited findings from a national cancer coping study led by Dana-Farber.
“Patients who received some form of psychological support reported a higher quality of life at the end of life than those who did not,” she noted.
People who receive support from their medical team or religious community are both more likely to transition to hospice care and decline active treatment, she said.
The symposium also highlighted a number of areas in need of further research. To encourage new research, Shields announced a pilot grant program funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Up to five grants of $50,000 per year are available.
