For people living in the parts of the world with a weak health care infrastructure, the services of faith groups can help meet their medical needs, according to experts writing in the Lancet medical journal this week. Researchers argue that religious groups’ emphasis on service can help close disparities in access to health care when taken beyond the confines of worship halls.
In a paper highlighting various roles religious groups play in improving health outcomes throughout the Third World and the United States’ low-income enclaves, the authors encourage world leaders to embrace those partnerships.
Endeavors highlighted in the piece include the mediation throughout West Africa at the height of the Ebola outbreak, during which faith leaders dissuaded residents from taking part in activities that would spread the disease. The study also mentioned religious organizations’ collaborations with UNICEF to raise childhood immunization rates and create long-standing medical services — including anti-malaria campaigns and maternal and HIV health services.
“Religious groups are major players in the delivery of healthcare, particularly in hard-to-reach and rural areas that are not adequately served by government,” Edward Mills, the author of the study and a senior epidemiologist at Global Evaluative Sciences in Canada, said in a statement to the Associated Press. “It is time for the general medical community to recognize the magnitude of services offered [by faith-based groups] and partner or support [them] to provide long-standing improvements in health,” he added.
Mills’ recommendations come months before global health leaders are expected to adopt new development targets in their goals of ending poverty, reducing child mortality, and tackling climate change. They will hash out new Sustainable Development Goals during a United Nations summit scheduled for September, and replace eight expiring U.N. Millennium Development Goals sometime later this year. Mills and her colleagues suggested that World Health Organization and other group collaborate with faith groups in reaching these new benchmarks.
Whatever the strategy they choose to employ in their collaboration with the faith-based community, global health leaders have much work to do.
A United Nations Children’s Fund report last year showed that nearly 17,000 children die worldwide from preventable causes, including pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria. Neglected tropical diseases — like dengue fever, rabies, and Guinea worm — have risen in profile in recent years, killing nearly 500,000 people worldwide annually. A WHO resolution that obligates member countries to form prevention programs and expand intervention has done little to stunt the spread of illness, due in part to high vaccine prices and the instability of conflict zones that preclude people in these communities from receiving life-saving medication. Other prevention efforts have also fallen short in tackling food insecurity, caused by a combination of poverty, lack of investment in agriculture, natural disasters, unstable markets, war, and food waste.
Even so, there’s a lot for world health officials to build on, especially when it comes to getting timely help to marginalized populations and spreading positive messages. Through the World Vision’s Channels of Hope project, more than 390,000 local faith leaders improved the health conditions of third-world communities. Islamic Relief USA, a community of humanitarians, aids development from the headquarters of 16 affiliate groups around the world, each organizing a slew of programs for expectant mothers, orphans, children, and other groups. The organization also has more than two dozen field offices, including some located in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Palestine, where they have addressed issues of water and sanitation, education, and hunger.
In his statement, Mills said that these faith-based organizations can provide a model for global health care entities to follow in order to expand medical access and improve the health infrastructure of marginalized communities.
“As the global health community plans for sustainable health goals for the future, it will be crucial to leverage existing infrastructure and existing community partnerships to improve health outcomes,” he said. “Faith-based organizations often represent the only health infrastructure in a region and have strong cultural ties to the communities. It is time for the general medical community to recognize the magnitude of services offered and partner or support to provide long-standing improvements in health.”
Here in the United States, some faith leaders have wielded their influence in the public policy realm to work toward reducing the number of uninsured Americans. For instance, Catholic nuns leveraged enough support to get the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed, a feat President Barack Obama acknowledged when he addressed the Catholic Health Association last month. Now, as the ACA goes into effect, faith leaders have also stood on the front lines against GOP lawmakers who oppose the law’s optional Medicaid expansion, framing the access to health care as a moral matter in marches across the country.
In his report, Mills asserts that faith global health organizations can replicate and expand such efforts across the world. Successfully implementing health care services however, would require churches to reconcile philosophical differences on immunization, use of birth control, abortion, female genital mutilation and other health care matters.
As Mills and his colleagues noted in another study, opposing views about these issues can break down lines of communication between faith groups and communities, ultimately thwarting efforts to change health outcomes. Health care workers in parts of the Africa saw this firsthand during the rollout of sexual education curriculum centered on abstinence. A report released in March concluded that the classes, subsidized by the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, didn’t change sexual behavior or reduce the spread of HIV.