The Role of the Buddhist Chaplain in Global Health: David Addiss, M.D. The emerging multidisciplinary field of global health is rooted in awareness that all life is interconnected and that people who live in poverty suffer a disproportionate share of the global disease burden. At its best, global health represents a compassionate, coordinated response to human suffering and a commitment to health equity through systemic change. Many, if not most, of those who enter the field of global health are motivated by spiritual values of compassion and service, but they frequently find it difficult to bring these values fully into their work. Some global health workers are traumatized by repeated exposure to intense suffering in resource-limited settings, while others, particularly in large organizations, find themselves spiritually isolated, disconnected from the compassion that initially inspired them and alienated from the people they seek to serve. Opportunities for global health practitioners to collectively acknowledge the spiritual impulse that led them to this work are virtually non-existent, even in training programs. Global health workers are further challenged by commercial, institutional, and political interests that increasingly dominate the field; the need to justify programs in economic terms;; the challenge of “seeing the faces” when working to improve health of entire populations; and an assumption that scientific rigor and clinical competency are incompatible with emotion or “soft” values. Continue Reading: bit.ly/1CUZJo2
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 13:52:36 +0000