The Spirit of Global Health

Abstract

Since the beginning of the World Health Organization, many of its staff members, regional offices, Member States, and directors-general have grappled with the question of what a ‘spiritual dimension’ of health looks like, and how it might enrich the health policies advocated by their organization. Contrary to the widespread perception that ‘spirituality’ is primarily related to palliative care and has emerged relatively recently within the WHO, this book shows that its history is considerably longer and more complex, and has been closely connected to the organization’s ethical aspirations, its quest for more holistic and equitable healthcare, and its struggle with the colonial legacy of international health organizations. Such ideals and struggles silently motivated many of its key actors and policies—such as the provision of universal primary healthcare—which for decades have embodied the organization’s loftiest aspirations. The WHO’s official relationship with ‘spirituality’ advanced in fits, leaps, and setbacks. At times creative and interdisciplinary, at others deeply political, this process was marked by cycles of institutional forgetting and remembering. Rather than a triumph of religious lobbyists, this book argues, the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health may be better understood as a ‘ghost’ that has haunted—and continues to haunt—the WHO as it comes to terms with its mandate of advancing health as a state of ‘complete well-being’ available to all.

Science and Faith to Understand Milk Bioactivity for Infants

“…In addition to physical, social, and mental health, spiritual health has been suggested as a necessary addition to the 'WHO health triad' [78]. The concept of spiritual health has a strong tradition in nursing fields and palliative care medicine, but has recently received greater focus in healthcare across the globe [79][80][81][82][83].…”

The Need to Widen the Concept of Health and to Include the Spiritual Dimension

“…One such attempt was made in 1984, when the 37th World Health Assembly adopted a resolution calling for the inclusion of the spiritual dimension in the Global Strategy for Health for All by the year 2000. Although the discussions in the World Health Assembly showed an appreciation for a spiritual dimension of health, they also revealed some difficulties, such as the question of whether a constitutional amendment was the right tool, and the ambiguity of the term "spiritual" [1]. Hence, the constitutional amendment had to be postponed.…”

“…It was developed by fifteen international field centres in an attempt to develop a quality of life assessment that would be applicable crossculturally [3]. The discussions involved input from stakeholder of different faith traditions and resulted in a nuanced and widely shared consensus of what really matters in life [1]. The WHOQOL has been used widely in many different settings and conditions (often in its abbreviated version) [4,5].…”

“…The WHOQOL has been used widely in many different settings and conditions (often in its abbreviated version) [4,5]. However, its crosscultural suitability remains a challenge [1].…”

Spiritualizing psychiatry: Transpersonal psychology, DSM, and Brazilian research about spirituality

“…In this literature, the healthcare field has been fruitful in the study of institutionalized forms of spirituality. Such works approach the topics of the insertion of traditional and alternative medicines into public health systems (Toniol, 2018), the analysis of 'spiritual care' in hospitals (Sullivan, 2014), and even the debate at the World Health Organization around the importance of spirituality for human health (Peng-Keller et al, 2022;Toniol, 2022).…”