Providing Holistic Care for Patients and Their Families
Research conducted within the Spiritual and Grief Care Center at Cincinnati Children’s is designed to accomplish two objectives: to understand the role religion and spirituality play in health outcomes and to understand the impacts religious and spiritual interventions can have on those outcomes.
To date, very little research exists on the topic of religion and spirituality for pediatric patient populations. Our team performs translational research studies to change that—and to achieve the goal of establishing our center as the hub for spiritual and grief care in pediatrics.
Findings to Inform Future Interventions
We partner with pediatric psychologists and biostatistics experts internally to conduct both quantitative and qualitative analyses. In a 2023 study published in the Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, for example, we found that close to 90% of adolescents admitted to inpatient psychiatric units experience religious and spiritual struggles. Additionally, we found significant associations between the severity of religious and spiritual struggles and the severity of depression and anxiety.
Qualitatively, we’re working to understand the impacts of interventions provided by chaplains in the clinical setting.
Once we identify specific interventions, our research efforts will expand to testing those interventions and creating tools, like patient-reported outcome measures, to see if we’re able to meet people’s spiritual needs in the pediatric hospital system.
Research by the Numbers
The Spiritual and Grief Care Center research team is funded by an endowment. Its members include:
- 1 principal investigator
- 2 spiritual care providers
- 1 clinical research coordinator (CRC)
