General and Specific Goals

The following statement of goals was prepared as part of the proposals that led to the founding of the Center. One of our tasks for the future will be to evaluate our progress towards the goals that guided our first three years of existence, examine the appropriateness of those goals for the evolving activities of the Center, and establish (or re-affirm) goals to take us forward from here.

1) Provide an organizational structure to facilitate new and ongoing research on issues related to religion, spirituality, life meaning, ethics/values, caring relationships, and multiple aspects of health (mental, physical, emotional, interpersonal, spiritual, etc.).

Immediate Goals

• Provide an organizational identity that will facilitate the ability of scholars from ISU to obtain external funding for grants, contracts, or other projects related to the interface of health with religion, values, and/or spirituality.
  
• Affiliated scholars will continue to work on existing grants and apply for additional grants to conduct research on various topics related to health, religion, and spirituality.
  
• Recruit or invite additional ISU scholars from a variety of disciplines to become affiliated with the Center.

Long Term Goals

• Continue to obtain external funding for research projects.
  
• Provide consultation and advisement to scholars conducting various forms of research regarding issues related to health, religion, spirituality, values, meaning, and related topics.
  
• Create and maintain a database of research findings on measures of health religiousness, spirituality, and of studies regarding their interrelationships (additional funding sources may need to be identified to help with the cost of this).
  
• Sponsor a national conference (to be held at ISU) on research advances in the study of health, religion, & spirituality.

2) Increase contact and conversation among health care providers, researchers, and consumers regarding the roles of science and religion/spirituality in defining and preserving health.

Immediate Goals

• Invite nationally recognized speakers to make presentations to the ISU and Terre Haute communities.
  
• Hold monthly meetings of the Advisory Board and affiliated scholars to plan programs and discuss topics related to health and religion/spirituality.
  
• Start a “journal club” for interested faculty, students, and local professionals to meet weekly and discuss articles or chapters on topics related to health, religion, and spirituality.

Long Term Goals

• Continue to support a public speaker’s series.
  
• With the assistance of our advisory board, create other public forums for disseminating information and/or facilitating discussion regarding the interface of health and religion/spirituality, such as brown-bags, discussion groups, etc.
  
• Provide an affiliation for scholars interested in studying perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors of health care practitioners and consumers regarding the relationships between health and religion/spirituality.

3) Support student learning, research, and scholarship regarding the interface of religion/spirituality and health.

Immediate Goals

• Attract graduate and undergraduate students with interests in the interface of health and religion/spirituality.
  
• Offer small research grants to undergraduate and graduate students.
  
• Create experiential learning opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students through involvement in faculty research, their own research, and/or community projects.

Long Term Goals

• Provide travel grants to students to allow them to present their research at state, national, or international conferences.
  
• Develop undergraduate and graduate courses on health and religion/spirituality to be offered on campus through different departments, including an interdisciplinary general education capstone course.

4) Support and provide educational and training opportunities for health professionals, future professionals, paraprofessionals, volunteers, and healthcare consumers on relationships between religion/spirituality and health.

Immediate Goals

• Create and maintain a web-site for the Center to serve as platform for accessing the data-base and method of disseminating research updates, news, schedules of events, and other information.
  
• Create (or use invited speakers to provide) a series of brief (1-2 hour) training or continuing education lectures to local health care professionals, medical students, medical residents, psychology graduate students, nursing students, and other appropriate groups

Long Term Goals

• Create or utilize outside resources to provide longer training or continuing education opportunities (half day-full day workshops, etc.) on health and religion/spirituality for local health care professionals, medical students and residents, nursing students, psychology graduate and undergraduate students, and other appropriate students and professionals in the Wabash Valley.
  
• Create distance learning opportunities (continuing education courses, training modules, etc.) on issues related to health, religion, and spirituality for dissemination to a wider audience.
  
• Provide not for credit courses on topics related to health and religion/spirituality through the ISU Division of Lifelong Learning.
  
• Create and disseminate consumer information resources educating health care consumers about empirical research findings regarding health and religion/spirituality.

Descriptions of Planned Activities and Programs

The following description of activities was originally part of our planning statement. The description has been updated to reflect Center activities since February of 2003.

1) Brown Bag Discussions and Invited Speakers
Our speakers series began in the fall of 2003, with local and national speakers giving talks at lunch time on and in the evenings. Talks have been held at both campus and community locations. Speakers have, and will continue to include local professionals and clergy, affiliated scholars of the Center, ISU faculty, and members of our Advisory Board, along with nationally recognized experts in the area of health, religion, and spirituality. Speakers have presented both public and professional talks, as well as experiential workshops.

Go to Journal Club Page »

2) Professional Education Workshops
So far we have hosted continuing education workshops on meditation, spirituality in psychotherapy, religion and clinical supervision, meta-assumptions of religion and psychotherapy, and Indian concepts of consciousness. Upcoming workshops will cover topics such as Addiction and Spirituality and Integrating Spirituality into Health Care. Future programs will continue to be aimed at local health care providers, faculty in professions related to health (e.g., Psychology, Counseling Psychology, Social Work, Nursing, Family & Consumer Sciences, Health and Safety, Athletic Training, etc.), and students in such areas. For some programs, non-university professionals may be charged a small fee in return for providing continuing professional education credits.

3) Conferences on Health, Religion, and Spirituality
Our first conference will be in March, 2005 and will focus on addiction and spirituality. Future conference topics may include: "Contemplative Practices and Healing" and "Religion, Altruism & Aggression: Helping, Hurting and Health." We hope to also hold an second conference on addiction and spirituality within the next few years.

4) Journal Club
A journal club is a group or people (typically of students and faulty in a medical school or graduate school context) who meet on a regular basis to discuss a set of articles or chapters that each member has read. Our journal club met from January - May 2004. Participants included graduate students, ISU faculty, and members of the Terre Haute community. Readings for the spring of 2004 were drawn from psychology journals. In future semesters, we may draw from medical or nursing journals. The journal club did not meet during fall 2004, due to Center efforts being focused on planning the Spirituality and Addictions Conference, co-hosting Dr. Harold Koenig's visit, and co-sponsoring the Campus Community Luncheon series on Spirituality and Health. In spring 2006, the journal club was held in conjunction with a course on spirituality and health offered by Dr. Margaret Moga and Dr. Roy Geib.

5) Development of Courses and Educational Materials
Dr. Johnson and Dr. Kristeller already address some material related to health, religion and spirituality in their Theories of Addiction (Dr. Johnson), Psychology of Meditation, and Health Psychology (Dr. Kristeller) courses. Dr. Kristeller offered a course Psychology of Mediation in the spring of 2004, and Dr. Maragaret Moga offered a course on acupuncture.  Dr. Moga and Dr. Roy Geib have also begun to offer courses in complementary and alternative medicine.  Dr. Patrick Bennet has offered courses in Psychology of Religion and an undergraduate research seminar on Rlegion and Health.

Starting from these foundations, we intend to develop additional course materials for existing courses as well as several potential new courses. The two new courses most likely to be developed are a graduate and/or advanced undergraduate course on Health, Religion, and Spirituality (covering a variety of topics including many of those we are currently studying in our research programs) and an undergraduate Senior Research Seminar on Religion and Health.

In addition to courses to be offered at ISU, a long term goal of the center is to develop additional types of educational materials. Dr. Johnson has been involved in the Clergy training Project. This is an effort by the national Association for Children of Alcoholics, The Johnson Institute, the Fetzer Institute, and the national institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to develop a training curriculum on prevention and treatment of alcohol use disorders for clergy, pastoral counselors and other ministry professions. Center faculty and staff are considering other possible topics for which web based distance education or professional workshops could be offered. Finally, we plan to explore the possibility of developing consumer education materials that could be made available in our community and elsewhere. These may take the form of printed materials, patient education classes, or other modes of delivery of information.