Drawing on a wide range of methodologies, this book documents a diverse portfolio of religious responses to HIV and AIDS at the local and global levels in sites from sub-Saharan Africa to New York City. The volume goes beyond the psychology of religion, which is often based on how religion is used to cope with illness. It seeks to examine the role of religious institutions and cultures as key players in civil society, and to examine not only psychological factors, but social, cultural, economic and political dimensions of religious responses to the AIDS epidemic. At times religious movements have provided powerful forces for community mobilisation in response to the social vulnerability, economic exclusion and health problems associated with HIV. In other contexts, religious cultures have reproduced values and practices that have seriously impeded more effective approaches to mitigate the epidemic. By highlighting these complex and sometimes contradictory social processes, this book provides new insights into the potential for religious institutions to address the HIV epidemic more effectively. More broadly, it shows how research can be done on religion in the area of global public health, showing how civil society organizations shape opportunities for health promotion: a crucial and new area of global public health research.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Global Public Health.
Miguel Muñoz-Laboy is an Associate Professor at Temple University, USA, and a public health and social work researcher whose work focuses on the intersections of social and cultural factors on determinants of HIV risk.
Jonathan Garcia is an Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University, USA, and a political anthropologist with extensive field research focused on HIV and AIDS and community mobilization in Brazil and the United States.
Joyce Moon-Howard is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, USA, and a specialist in community-involved public health research primarily among minority communities with a long-standing research and programmatic interest in religious responses to HIV and AIDS. She is a specialist in community involved public health research primarily among minority communities and has had a long-standing research and programmatic interest in religious responses to HIV and AIDS domestically and internationally.
Patrick A. Wilson is an Associate Professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, USA, and a community psychologist with more than a decade of experience examining the intersecting roles that psychological factors and socio-contextual factors (i.e., discrimination and stigma, religion) play in explaining HIV risk and protective behaviours among racial/ethnic and sexual minority populations.
Richard Parker is a Professor of Sociomedical Sciences and Anthropology at Columbia University, USA, and is one of the pioneer scholars in examining the structural factors and the political economy of the global HIV/AIDS epidemic.
