 Welcome everyone to this ABS presentation where we will be exploring the intersection of public health and religion. So today the aim of this presentation is really just to share some initial insights that were developed by this reading group that began to meet regularly in the fall of 2021. So we will share a little bit about how this group came together. What was our process, what were some key questions that emerge out of that consultative space and then maybe one of some future steps that we're hoping to take together. There are four of us currently represented today. So my name is Yovanya. I am from North Carolina. I have a background in public health and social work, and my focus is specifically maternal and child health. And I am also serving in my neighborhood. Currently, tutoring a book one study circle with some social workers and a chance class teacher and a mother of three. My name is Anish Aurora. I am from Milton, Ontario. But I'm currently studying at McGill University. I'm doing a PhD in family medicine and primary care. I am learning to help out with children's classes and I'm also taking part in a number of we circles. And I've recently become a father of a puppy. My name is Andrew Hattella. I currently live in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I am faculty of in community health sciences at the University of Manitoba my background is actually in psychology but since my earlier work I've kind of drifted more into this aspect of community health focused mostly on adolescent wellness and resilience. My questions around that and spirituality as a part of that process to support young people in their well being. And I'm also learning in my own neighborhood like I'm sure many of you are about applying the principles of the face to social development and community action, learning to serve as an animator of a junior youth empowerment program, and also a father of a young two year old. My name is John Asani. I'm faculty in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. I work in public policy mostly and also. I work in Washington DC, and have two boys, six and nine, and have the pleasure of also serving as a tutor for a study circle. Thank you. So, to begin our presentation I think we'll hear from Anish, who will really just take us through how this group came about. Before I even talk about how our group came together what I really wanted to highlight was what a reading group is for the for the listeners that may not be familiar with this kind of setting. So, the Association for behind studies in response to a call that was given to them by the Universal House of Justice was asked to really foster the space where people can come together to think about to read to consult on and to potentially contribute to a discourse. And so, Andrew Attala and I in 2019 were part of a reading group with Dr. Todd Smith on science science and religion and sort of the philosophical underpinnings of that context. And together we decided to be connected and we decided we wanted to carry forward with those learnings and those and that kind of space but with more of a public health focus. We created this group we met with participants and what is really essential to note is that all of our participants, really long for a space like this where we can come together to think about public health the intersections of it with science and and and religion and spirituality and really foster an environment where we could do so in a very safe, very open, very critical and very consultative manner. I'll pass this on now to Andrew who will talk a little bit more about the logistics of how we thought through the topics and grappled with choosing a reading list. We started this with a reading group the year before around science and religion and we really were inspired by that group to look more deeply at the topic of public health because in one sense we realized there's a lot of overlap and similarities in terms of how public health is conceptualized and what its goals are in terms of advancing the health of populations and then at the same time, from a different perspective religion is also there with looking after supporting the health and well being of population and so we wanted to interrogate that overlap a little better to come to understand both of them and try to advance some kind of an integration and dialogue between the two fields as well so in addition in terms of choosing the readings and going through that whole process part of the inspiration came from a paper and presentation by Dr. Farzum Arbab that was done in 2016 on the intellectual life of the Baha'i community. And in that paper some of you are probably familiar with it it's it's not focused on public health and this topic per se but what he really encouraged us to think about is this examination of a field and going really deep into understanding the assumptions the intellectual intellectual foundations that give rise to current thinking in a field and there's one quote I wanted to share that really kind of inspired us or you know gave us some motivation in terms of what what readings to pick. This is on page 14 where he shares all that is being suggested is that such a careful examination should go beyond behavior and sociopolitical structure and should also include the intellectual foundations of the present order. At least the intellectual foundations of social economic and political thought. And let me be so bold as to say the intellectual foundations of culture. So in many ways that's what we're trying to do in this reading group was uncover the intellectual foundations of the culture of public health and try to understand where religion and spirituality as a system of knowledge fit in with or relate to the system of knowledge that of science that is generally the foundation of public health and how those how those relate. So, at a basic structure it was about maybe three months of reading together it was a pretty intensive process, pretty rigorous in that sense that we had about three or four readings each week. We met weekly for that that time and had guided questions that helped us kind of talk together consult and really just try to again pick through and uncover some of these foundations of the field and learn part of the motivation throughout all this as well was how do we make any kind of offering inspired from the Baha'i insights of the world, Baha'i community different learning that the Baha'i community has been generating. How might we be able to apply that in some way to the field of public health. So part of the readings the first bit was more of a historical kind of organization around what is public health how did it come about what are some of the history of it. Then we kind of moved more into some of the current reading around religion spirituality and public health and we were, we were surprised that there's actually quite a field there's a lot of publications a lot of people that are that are into this area of research and so they also gave us an opportunity to learn about these individuals who are they what are they're saying what are their backgrounds and assumptions and to just kind of build a better sense of of this interface between religion and public health. And then from there we we moved into. We spent a fair amount of weeks looking at some of the publications by the international Baha'i community. At the level of the UN, and kind of looking at systems of governance and world order and how insights in terms of the institutional process of the Baha'i community how does that also relate to how public health functions. I mean, some of its goals and assumptions as well and then at the end we we dove a little bit even deeper into some of the Baha'i concepts and papers around the harmony of science and religion. And again how that how that connects with public health. Just one more note before I pass it off is throughout all of this of course was the COVID-19 pandemic that really, you know, probably for all of us we had the experience of listening to public health officials hearing governments talk about it and so that was also, you know, really on the forefront of our minds throughout this whole process bringing our own experience bringing, you know, public health orders government mandates how do people, you know, how our governments and public health institutions operating to protect their populations what are the recommendations how is science, you know informing all of that discourse. So part of it was also, you know, our own experience of going through that pandemic and how we're seeing religion and spirituality come into that process and how that also kind of shaped some of our readings and our thinking and helping us identify some of these sexual foundations of the field as well so there was a lot of rich insights that came throughout this time and I'll pass it off now so we can go a little bit deeper into what what were some of the key questions and assumptions that we were struggling with and trying to learn about. Thanks Andrew, I just do want to acknowledge that the success of this group was very much a function of the preparation and groundwork that you and Anish laid. To discuss the some of the key questions that that came up. One of them may not be of any surprise to to to our audience and to to those who are interested in the issues of spirituality religion and public health and is probably perfectly captured in the first reading that we were assigned, which was called the elephant in the room, one of the first readings and it was really about how the experience of spirituality and engagement with religion is is a is a kind of a significant experience for the vast majority of people on planet earth, and yet, if one was to go through an entire graduate program on public health. The only context in which one might hear the word religion is when public health practitioners are trying to get something done. So they will engage with religion in a very instrumental way they'll say something like well, we need to get this kind of public health education message out there let's let's talk to the religious leaders, for example, and that will be like literally the only time you'll hear it in a in a two year program of study with with with hundreds of of study hours of reading so. I think this idea of the elephant in the room was was was a good. It was a good one because for many of us for for the vast majority of people alive today, the experience of the spirit and spirituality is very much a daily experience and yet in public health it's almost silent. Now, what was wonderful was that as as was described earlier, we've encountered a rich literature that existed on the topic and yet we didn't see it in our everyday kind of training and practice related to that point was that our own experience as kind of public health researchers and practitioners was very much a materialistic basis for talking about health. I remember a conversation with one of my mentors, which was, you know, we're in the field of public health we want health for all we you know we want to create the healthiest possible world, but the question of why was never asked why do we need health, why are we here what's our purpose are we, are we healthy so we can just consume more and acquire more and accumulate more, or are we healthy for some deeper and actually kind of the absence of any explanation or interrogation of that kind of bigger question or ultimate concern was always a source of kind of internal discomfort for me and so this reading group was really my first experience of having the opportunity to interrogate that to, to explore it to try and understand why that might be. And then I think a further point that was very encouraging not only for me but I think for the remainder of the group was that this group was really a welcome space for us. But for some of my colleagues also one of my colleagues from from work. I mentioned in passing I'm in this wonderful group, and she asked if she could join. And so I feel like it, it also tapped into a kind of a longing for for people who are interested in questions of spirituality and public health. It gave us a space to explore the implications of certain principles together. One discussion really stands up to me. As Andrew was mentioning was about a document from the behind international community about this on the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. And kind of the underlying theme of that document is if we if we begin from the principle of the oneness of humanity what would the agencies and the kind of, you know, effects of the United Nations look like. So we began to ask ourselves the same question about public health if we really accepted the principle of the oneness of humanity how might we have addressed say for example, the distribution of vaccines during the covert 19 pandemic how might we have understood the way we think about the movement of populations and so on so these were some of the questions that were raised. One thing that I'll share is that, like in anything. We're always able to learn when we gather and consult and explore a theme together and I think one of the, you know, one of the things that this reading group fulfilled for me. I had the opportunity to continue a dialogue and a ongoing conversation about religion spirituality and public health that I really longed for, for years really, and and had never found the opportunity to do so so it almost was a weekly experience that when we finished our discussions. I had this immense feeling of gratitude that this space had been created and this deep longing had been fulfilled. Thanks john. To elaborate a little bit more, I think these were well articulated points. And I think maybe I'll start by saying that, you know, just having the reading group was a very systematic way for us to begin articulating some of these questions which maybe, you know, with some passing thoughts in our head but being able to come together every weekend and sit down with readings I think being able to then start etching out those questions I think was a very helpful exercise for all of us. I think another aspect I think of our discussions and our work is that we were conscious that, you know, to advance the discourse we also wanted to find these points of unity, where, where we could come and come in with other people's in the field and kind of see okay like, where do we agree and how can we advance the discussions and so as Andrew was mentioning we were actually pleasantly surprised to find so much literature out there that had been published but maybe that wasn't well known to many of us because, you know, as john had mentioned, we didn't encounter in schools or in our in our work. But in encountering this literature, we found some points of unity that maybe is helpful to just even just mentioned that, for example, Heather Oman like began to ask this question like what should even public health students be taught about, you know, at school and what kind of material should we be integrating in in the education. I think another aspect was this departure from seeing religion as just an interesting factor that impacted health to maybe moving towards religion and spirituality and religious communities becoming to be seen as a collaborative in connection to health and how together these two communities the scientific community and the religious community could come and, you know, work together. I think it was very interesting that our reading room was also happening during the pandemic because then that very question became very practical for us so during the pandemic we were able to explore current events and explore how religion could work in tandem with the public health care system. I think also having the participation of john's colleague was was something really helpful because it allowed us to see that this was a conversation that was beyond just ourselves and that there were others out there thinking very deeply about these questions and one conversation that stood out to me actually with with Beth, the colleague from john was that at some point we asked ourselves we asked ourselves, when did you know concepts like kindness and having hope become utopian ideals. There were these not things that we were talking about regularly in terms of how can our public health care systems that we are familiar with reflect these things, you know reflect the spiritual qualities reflect these values that inherently are how humans are to relate with each other. And so I think, you know, we were also coming up with very fundamental questions about public health that really to our purpose, as john had mentioned. I think this reading could also help bring that back to like the current reality of what we were living and what we were doing in our work and in our communities. And so I think, then, you know, on a more personal level for me who I'm currently not in a working in a professional capacity, but the ability to have this reading group was tremendous because it allowed me to continue exploring the field and being connected to, to these questions, even as I'm like the primary caregiver at home with my children, I'm still able to still able to contribute to the discourse and I think just that little space every week in a way that the way it happened because it was flexible the rhythm was manageable. And for this coherence also in my life, which I think was something that was really special as well about this group so definitely very grateful for it, as john has mentioned and very grateful for the work that was done to be able to allow for this reading group to happen. Yeah, so I don't know if there may be any other thoughts that Andrew and you should like to share before we close this presentation. Maybe share one one other point kind of underlying all of our approach was this attitude of learning that we're familiar with and other aspects of the Baha'i community and our expansion and consolidation work but bringing that into this level of contributing to learning about discourse we also saw how the areas of action and reflection and consultation and study just how important that was to also advancing our, our process of, you know, learning about the discourse learning how to contribute to the discourse and one of the things that we're still hoping to do as a group, moving forward is learn about writing together as a particular outlet or a particular form of action in this area and how we can work on different forms of writing together, academic publications, other kinds of kind of our own notes and reflections from the process but how to also put things down into paper and writing and we're still learning about that but it's also an exciting area to do as a, to learn about as a collaborative process, most of writing academic levels tends to be individuals on their computer alone, but we really were excited about the idea of exploring how to write as a, as a collaborative and put some of these thoughts and insights together on paper and how we can get feedback and just begin that process like others mentioned about engaging in with others and like-minded individuals who are also learning about these areas. Thank you Andrew. I think it might also be worth mentioning that we've also done some collaboration together so we're currently experimenting with contributing to each other's work as well by giving feedback on written pieces. We've tried to apply for small grants to collaborate on projects together. We want to explore how to use different forms of communication so whether it's a written piece, a blog post or a podcast to see how we can include a broader audience also in this conversation. And then I think we've also talked about maybe creating spaces where other colleagues can be invited to explore some of these themes together. I'm really excited to actually join you all in the live session and to actually be able to explore any questions that may come out from this brief introduction into our group. And I'm also very excited to continue working alongside these wonderful people in trying to advance our discourse and contribute as much as we can and learn as much as we can moving forward. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you at the presentation. Thank you so much. Thank you.