The Boston University Experience: Religion, Ethics, and Public Health

Abstract

This chapter describes Boston University School of Public Health’s (BUSPH) experience integrating the intersection of religion and public health through a course entitled Religion, Ethics, and Public Health. The efforts described here have spanned over four decades beginning with faculty experiences in the 1970s that inspired the first iteration of the course in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the re-introduction of the course in 2013, following an extended hiatus. We begin by describing the community around BUSPH and the circumstances that inspired the initiation of the course. Next, we discuss iterations of the course through the 1980s and early 2000s. We then describe the course as it stands today, providing an in-depth description of course objectives, week-by-week themes, case study examples, midterm and final assignments, an outline of our key conceptual framework, and various methods of course evaluation. In closing, we discuss the challenges and facilitators we’ve faced along the way as well as lessons learned, which we hope will benefit other schools of public health that wish to introduce similar courses.