Faith-Inspired Health Care in Sub-Saharan Africa : An Introduction to the Spring 2014 Issue

This special issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs is comprised of seven articles aiming to strengthen the evidence on faith-inspired engagement in health in sub-Saharan Africa. The field of enquiry is diverse, with few foundational texts, few standardized frameworks for reference...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Olivier, Jill, Wodon, Quentin
Format: Journal Article
Language:en_US
Published: Taylor and Francis 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/18087
Description
Summary:This special issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs is comprised of seven articles aiming to strengthen the evidence on faith-inspired engagement in health in sub-Saharan Africa. The field of enquiry is diverse, with few foundational texts, few standardized frameworks for reference, and a wildly varied terminology. In fact, this variation in terminology often results in a nearly impenetrable field of acronyms for the uninitiated, ranging from religious entities, faith-inspired institutions (FIIs), faith-based organizations (FBOs) and the like. That variation is part of the puzzle, and as a result, newcomers tend to struggle to find the points of access. And, generally, substantial time and resources are spent in costly meetings re-treading introductory ground, rather than pushing the debate and evidence further. This logically results in repeated calls for more systematic research and more theoretical structuring of the field of inquiry.