b a ckground: the purpose of this study was to examine religious, cultural, and social beliefs of healthy women about breast cancer in rural settings in iran. m ethods: in the present study, 16 in-depth interviews with health care leaders, social and religious experts and 11 focus group discussions were conducted with 79 women in the rural areas near the capital city of tehran, iran. grounded t...

The Norwegian health authorities buy one third of their addiction treatment from private institutions run by organizations and trusts. Several of these are founded on religious values. The aim of the study was to investigate such value-based treatment and the patients’ experiences of spirituality and religiousness as factors of meaning-making in rehabilitation. The study was performed in an exp...

BACKGROUND The Mexico-U.S. border region is experiencing rising rates of blood-borne infections among injection drug users (IDUs), emphasizing the need for harm reduction interventions. METHODS We assessed the religious and cultural factors affecting the acceptability and feasibility of three harm reduction interventions--Needle exchange programs (NEPs), syringe vending machines, and safer in...

This article adds to recent literature in the study of religion and marriage by examining older couples’ use of religion as a cultural repertoire in enduring marriages. The study includes qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with 43 married, Christian couples. Couples reported four predominant social contexts that gave sacred meanings to their marriage: prayer, worship services and sermo...

Religious place attachment is an affective bond that develops between people and their religious settings. The published literature shows that although religion has a significant impact on the public ‘place attachment’, the architectural features and attributes of the places could still play an influencing role in strengthening this attachment. However, the role of architectural characteristics...

There is much talk about the trust crisis in China and the possible role of religion in rebuilding China’s moral order. This study is an attempt to examine religion’s impact on the emerging market economy in China, focusing on trust in business relations that might be generated by the Christian faith. Based on 43 in-depth interviews with Christian entrepreneurs in China, our study shows that th...

CONTEXT Patients frequently rely on religious faith to cope with cancer, but little is known about the associations between religious coping and the use of intensive life-prolonging care at the end of life. OBJECTIVE To determine the way religious coping relates to the use of intensive life-prolonging end-of-life care among patients with advanced cancer. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS A ...