Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship

Much has been written about WHO. Relatively little is known, however, about the organisation’s evolving relationship with health-related personal beliefs, ‘faith-based organisations’ (FBOs), religious leaders and religious communities (‘religious actors’). This article presents findings from a 4-yea...

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Autores principales: Winiger, Fabian, Peng-Keller, Simon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BMJ Publishing Group 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8070851/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33888486
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004073
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author Winiger, Fabian
Peng-Keller, Simon
author_facet Winiger, Fabian
Peng-Keller, Simon
author_sort Winiger, Fabian
collection PubMed
description Much has been written about WHO. Relatively little is known, however, about the organisation’s evolving relationship with health-related personal beliefs, ‘faith-based organisations’ (FBOs), religious leaders and religious communities (‘religious actors’). This article presents findings from a 4-year research project on the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health and WHO conducted at the University of Zürich. Drawing on archival research in Geneva and interviews with current and former WHO staff, consultants and programme partners, we identify three stages in this relationship. Although since its founding individuals within WHO occasionally engaged with religious actors, it was not until the 1970s, when the primary healthcare strategy was developed in consultation with the Christian Medical Commission, that their concerns began to influence WHO policies. By the early 1990s, the failure to roll out primary healthcare globally was accompanied by a loss of interest in religion within WHO. With the spread of HIV/AIDS however, health-related religious beliefs were increasingly recognised in the development of a major quality of life instrument by the Division of Mental Health, and the work of a WHO expert committee on cancer pain relief and the subsequent establishment of palliative care. While the 1990s saw a cooling off of activities, in the years since, the HIV/AIDS, Ebola and COVID-19 crises have periodically brought religious actors to the attention of the organisation. This study focusses on what we suggest may be understood as a trend towards a closer association between the activities of WHO and religious actors, which has occurred in fits and starts and is marked by attempts at institutional translation and periods of forgetting and remembering.
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spelling pubmed-80708512021-05-11 Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship Winiger, Fabian Peng-Keller, Simon BMJ Glob Health Original Research Much has been written about WHO. Relatively little is known, however, about the organisation’s evolving relationship with health-related personal beliefs, ‘faith-based organisations’ (FBOs), religious leaders and religious communities (‘religious actors’). This article presents findings from a 4-year research project on the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health and WHO conducted at the University of Zürich. Drawing on archival research in Geneva and interviews with current and former WHO staff, consultants and programme partners, we identify three stages in this relationship. Although since its founding individuals within WHO occasionally engaged with religious actors, it was not until the 1970s, when the primary healthcare strategy was developed in consultation with the Christian Medical Commission, that their concerns began to influence WHO policies. By the early 1990s, the failure to roll out primary healthcare globally was accompanied by a loss of interest in religion within WHO. With the spread of HIV/AIDS however, health-related religious beliefs were increasingly recognised in the development of a major quality of life instrument by the Division of Mental Health, and the work of a WHO expert committee on cancer pain relief and the subsequent establishment of palliative care. While the 1990s saw a cooling off of activities, in the years since, the HIV/AIDS, Ebola and COVID-19 crises have periodically brought religious actors to the attention of the organisation. This study focusses on what we suggest may be understood as a trend towards a closer association between the activities of WHO and religious actors, which has occurred in fits and starts and is marked by attempts at institutional translation and periods of forgetting and remembering. BMJ Publishing Group 2021-04-22 /pmc/articles/PMC8070851/ /pubmed/33888486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004073 Text en © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Original Research
Winiger, Fabian
Peng-Keller, Simon
Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship
title Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship
title_full Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship
title_fullStr Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship
title_full_unstemmed Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship
title_short Religion and the World Health Organization: an evolving relationship
title_sort religion and the world health organization: an evolving relationship
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8070851/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33888486
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004073
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