Title:Strengthening trust in health systems

Georgetown’s Global Health Institute has launched a new project that explores how collaborations between faith and health actors can improve global health outcomes and well-being.

In partnership with The Lancet, one of the world’s top medical journals, the Georgetown-Lancet Commission on Faith, Trust, and Health connects international faith actors across traditions, health practitioners, researchers, academic leaders, and policymakers to help strengthen trust in health systems.

The commission—which is housed within the Global Health Institute and funded by The Gates Foundation, the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton World Charities Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust—aims to advance dialogue and understanding between faith and health experts to address shifts in the public’s trust in health systems and science.

“Faith actors can serve as powerful partners in health, especially in times of crisis and in underserved communities,” says Deus Bazira, director of the Global Health Institute and the Center for Global Health Practice and Impact.

Bazira co-chairs the commission alongside Kezevino (Vinu) Aram, executive committee member of Religions for Peace, and David Beasley, former executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme and the former governor of South Carolina.

“I feel fortunate to co-chair a body with such breadth of representation and intentionality,” says Bazira.

At Georgetown, the commission includes John T. Monahan, professor of medicine and senior advisor to Georgetown’s Global Health Institute and senior lecturer at Georgetown Law; Katherine Marshall, senior fellow at Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs; Carol Keehan, a former member of Georgetown’s board of directors; and Jack Leslie, adjunct distinguished professor at Georgetown and chairman of the National Institutes of Health’s Board of Advisors.

In an article launching the commission, titled “Health and faith partnerships to strengthen trust: the Georgetown-Lancet Commission on Faith, Trust, and Health,” commissioners underscore that mistrust in institutions, combined with the politicization of health, structural inequities, and the spread of misinformation, are weakening public confidence in health science and systems.

However, religious institutions and leaders are often uniquely positioned to influence and guide health decisions and behaviors in the communities they serve. “What makes this commission distinctive is its commitment to avoid instrumentalizing either public health or faith communities, and to instead build genuine, lasting partnerships,” says Bazira. “Our work is just a small piece of efforts by others who bring the same level of interest and concern over trust erosion and are committed to finding effective ways to reverse troubling trends.”