BHLP Research
BHLP fosters a new orientation to the field of medicine and healing, incorporating the study of world religions into cross-cultural research. We examine a wide range of cultural and religious healing traditions and collaborate with providers, traditional healers and religious leaders to promote a model of integrative healthcare. Our objectives are: 1) to investigate the many ways that religion and culture play a role in the lives of communities and individuals and, more broadly, in social, political, and economic events, 2) to apply this knowledge to the development of medical curriculum and clinical practice guidelines, 3) to train healthcare providers and scholars in other fields to appreciate and work effectively across cultural differences, and 4) to advocate for institutional and public policies that address imbalances in resources, rights, and power.

The Scholars Program: 2001-2002
Through its funding from the Ford Foundation, during 2001 and 2002, BHLP supported the work of four to six graduate student researchers each year. The members of the research team came from graduate schools throughout Boston and represented such disciplines as anthropology, religious studies, and public health.

The program provided training in developing a project proposal to be submitted to the Institutional Review Board, the ethics committee at Boston University School of Medicine. The summer involved an intensive internship, during which the team members engaged in fieldwork. During the fall, they analyzed their data and developed presentations for community, academic, and medical audiences. The teaching team provided mentoring in proposal development, urban ethnographic fieldwork, data analysis, the preparation of conference-quality presentations, and writing for publication.

For an overview of these projects, click here


The Projects
Each project had to focus on any of the following:

1) a particular African Diaspora community
2) a particular religious/healing tradition
3) a particular issue or health condition, as defined
    within specific community(ies).

Because we are based in the Department of Pediatrics, the project had to, in some way, involve children and/or adolescents. This involvement could focus on the experiences of children and/or adolescents themselves, or on practices chosen by family members in the pursuit of healing for children and/or adolescents.

We also foregrounded issues of race, class, and gender, as primary categories of analysis. The projects had to represent topics with a potential for introducing and supporting change in the provision and practice of health care.

Each researcher was assigned three mentors: a member of the community in which s/he was working, an academic who specialized in the study of the particular topic, and a physician who worked with the particular patient community and/or who focused his/her work on the topic chosen by the researcher. The three mentors helped the researcher throughout the year.