Health, Religion, and Religious Conversion: The Pro-Health Study

ABSTRACT

Although qualitative studies point to a link between religious conversion and a person’s heightened concern for their own health and the overcoming of illness and suffering in general, scant quantitative research has been produced on the subject. This article aims to address such an absence by analyzing the results of an epidemiological study carried out on civil servants in Rio de Janeiro in 1999 known as the Estudo Pró-Saúde [Pro-Health Study]. Of the 3,562 individuals surveyed, 62% still identified with the religion they were raised with, 26% had converted to another religion, and 12% considered themselves to be of “no religion”. Religious conversion – a variable derived by means of comparing a person’s religion during their upbringing with their religion declared during the study – was marked by means of a growth in Spiritism and in the “no religion” group. In order to verify the association between the variable of self-reported health status and the variables of religious identify and religious conversion, a statistical analysis was carried out adjusted according to social and demographic variables. Subjects were 40% more likely to report their own health status as “average or poor” before undergoing a religious conversion, compared to a self-reported status of “good or very good”, regardless of age, gender, and level of education.

religion; religious conversion; self-reported health status; Pro-Health Study