BUILDING HEALTHY COMMUNITIES THROUGH MEDICAL-RELIGIOUS PARTNERSHIPS. By Richard Gordon Bennett and William Daniel Hale. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. NLM ID: 101485164, ISBN-13 978-0-8018-9293-6 (pbk)

Excerpt

After over a century of relentless secularization under the biomedical model, medicine and health care institutions in America are experiencing a modest revival of interest in and respect for the psycho-spiritual aspects of healing and wellness. For their part, religious institutions are reassuming a measure of responsibility for the physical and mental as well as spiritual health of their constituents. One result of these developments has been the formation of medical–religious partnerships. Hospitals and clinics are partnering with congregations to achieve common goals of improving the health of their members and communities. To provide resources and best-practice models for those engaged in these cooperative ventures, Bennett and Hale have produced a revised and updated second edition of their successful book first published in 2000. …