Project 4: Spiritual and religious (S/R) factors in public health training, practice, and research; Please specify project(s) of interest in your application and indicate project number(s)
Winston Tseng, Research Scientist
Public Health
Applications for Spring 2024 are closed for this project.
This project involves numerous interviews. Its overall purpose is planning further projects to advance the mainstreaming within the public health field, both in schools of public health and among frontline public health practitioners, of recognition that spiritual and religious (S/R) factors are important, and that high-quality skilled attention and adequate time can and should be given to S/R factors and communities in public health training, practice, and research. Although there is now an enormous research base of thousands of studies and dozens of meta-analyses on S/R and health, ours will be the first project to employ a stakeholder approach that is comprehensive in scope, probing major stakeholder groups across public health sectors, with the aim of facilitating the appropriate integration of attention and prioritization to spirituality/religion, a key protective factor in public health. The resulting stakeholder analysis will be usable in strategic planning to develop and prioritize a set of national public health strategies that can be implemented in select leading public health sites across the US, facilitating public health (PH) cultural change and perhaps eventually leading to long-term PH systemic change.
The most central activity for this planning project is deliberations by leaders in the S/R-PH field to strategically plan how to facilitate culture changes (mainstreaming). This planning project will also gather formative data relevant to determining planning needs, assets, strategic priorities, barriers, facilitators, and implementation preferences of each stakeholder group (e.g., Schools of Public Health, PH workforce, researchers, gatekeepers, and the faith community) pertaining to mainstream integration of S/R within the PH field. More specifically, we will conduct semi-structured key informant interviews with leading PH practitioners in the community who have done exemplary work on addressing/integrating S/R factors and/or faith community partnerships in PH, or who may have experiences and insights about the S/R-related needs and opportunities of SPHs and/or various sectors of the PH workforce.
Role: 1. Provide support in planning, data collection, analysis, and reporting activities of the project.
2. Assist in the design and implementation of instruments (e.g., interviews, surveys), reports and documentation of progress, including but not limited to data collection, analyzing data, describing findings, developing charts/tables, and designing fact sheets and reports.
3. Conduct searches and reviews of data and documentary sources, annual reports, and other S/R public health materials.
4. Assist in coordinating in-person or virtual project meetings or conference calls, developing meeting minutes, and presentations.
5. Other duties as requested by the supervisor.
Qualifications: 1. Student majoring in public health, social work, psychology, or another related field, or with substantial interest and if possible coursework in spirituality/religion. At least 3rd or 4th year student desired.
2. Interested in public health research and implications of faith community partnerships and/or S/R factors for public health practice.
3. Demonstrated research skills required. Experience with qualitative data analysis desired. Experience in statistical data analysis a plus.
4. Excellent attention to detail, organizational skills, and strong initiative required.
5. Ability to work effectively both independently and as a team member in a fast-paced environment.
6. Proficiency with Mac and PC based computers, Office application suites from Google, and MS Office software required.
Hours: to be negotiated
Off-Campus Research Site: Health Research for Action 435 University Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-7358
Related website: http://healthresearchforaction.org/
Biological & Health Sciences Social Sciences