From the Schools of Public Health

Abstract

Religious congregations have a long history of collaborating with agencies and universities to provide services and implement health promotion activities. 1 Yet despite this history, faith-based organizations seldom consider academic research when developing their own programs. For their part, researchers often avoid collaborative studies of religion and health behavior because of the intensely personal and political nature of the topic. Recently, however, a growing number of researchers and congregations are working together to examine the relationship between religion and health behavior. [1][2][3] Based on the experience of one such project-Columbus Congregations for Healthy Youth-this article describes how such collaboration offers a promising approach for conducting rigorous research in a faith-based setting. By focusing on the controversial area of adolescent sexual health, the project helps illustrate both the potential and the limits of collaborative research involving universities and congregations.