Facts and Figures

> Health Disparities-- the Illusion of Equal Treatment
> Health Insurance--Living Without It
> HIV/AIDS--20 Years and No Cure
> Income and Healthcare
> Sexual Health
> Georgians with No Healthcare Insurance
> Health and Religious Faith
> Understanding and Improving Health

Sources:
1. National Institute for Healthcare Research, June 2000 (http://www.nihr.org/index.html)
2. John Templeton Foundation, Highlights from the Medical Literature (http://www.templeton.org)

Active religious involvement increases the chance for living longer by 29%, according to a groundbreaking review summing the results of 42 studies totaling nearly 126,000 people. (1)

86 percent of Americans believe personal prayer, meditation, or other spiritual and religious practices can accelerate or help the medical treatment of people who are ill. (2)

Patients are three times more likely to survive open-heart surgery if they depend on their religious faith. (2)

Heart patients who are religious have 20 percent shorter post-operative hospital stays than non-religious patients. (2)

Hospital stays are nearly two and one-half times longer for older patients without a religious affiliation, compared to older patients with any affiliation. (2)

Over a 28-year study period, the risk of dying was almost 25 percent less (35 percent less for women) for frequent religious service attendees, after controlling for health practices, social ties, and well beings. (2)

Source: The Healing Power of Faith: How Belief and Prayer Can Help You Triumph Over Disease, Harold G. Koenig, M.D., Director of Duke University's Center for the Study of Religion/Spirituality and Health (New York: Touchstone, 1999), p. 24.

People who regularly attend church, pray individually, and read the Bible have significantly lower diastolic blood pressure than the less religious. Those with the lowest blood pressure both attend church and pray or study the Bible often.

People who attend church regularly are hospitalized much less often than people who never or rarely participate in religious services.

People with strong religious faith are less likely to suffer depression from stressful life events, and if they do, they are more likely to recover from depression than those who are less religious.

The deeper a person's religious faith, the less likely he or she is to be crippled by depression during and after hospitalization for physical illness.

Religious people have healthier lifestyles. They tend to avoid alcohol and drug abuse, risky sexual behavior, and other unhealthy habits.

Elderly people with a deep, personal ("intrinsic") religious faith have a stronger sense of well-being and life satisfaction than their less religious peers. This may be due in part to the stable marriages and strong families religious people tend to build.

People with strong faith who suffer from physical illness have significantly better health outcomes than less religious people.

People who attend religious services regularly have stronger immune systems than their less religious counterparts. We found that people who went to church regularly had significantly lower blood levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6), which rises with unrelieved chronic stress. High levels of IL-6 reflect a weakened immune system, which, in turn, increases the risk of infection, autoimmune disease, and certain cancers.

Religious people live longer. A growing body of research shows that religious people are both physically healthier into later life and live longer than their nonreligious counterparts. Religious faith appears to protect the elderly from the two major afflictions of later life, cardiovascular disease and cancer. In this regard, religion may be as significant a protective factor as not smoking in terms of survival and longevity.

Hundreds of major studies by other researchers have produced similar findings. For example, religious hip-fracture patients recover faster than their nonreligious counterparts. Older people who attend religious services avoid disability significantly longer than their nonattending peers. After open-heart surgery, patients who find comfort in their religious faith are three times more likely to survive than nonreligious patients. The risk of dying from all causes is up to 35 percent lower for people who attend religious services once or more a week than for those who attend less frequently.