EDITORIAL        
 

May 2023. Christian Journal for Global Health 10(1)           
 

Building evidence in diverse places where healing is needed most 
 

This year the journal completes a decade of 
publishing Christian perspectives on global health.  In an 
accompanying editorial on research, reflection, and 
writing for global health, Daniel O’Neill and Nathan 
Grills review the case of why the journal exists and why 
it is both right to publish such perspectives and how such 
publishing can be helpful to the church and our neighbors 
around the world.  Their argument is comprehensive, 
Scripture-informed at multiple points and very well 
worth your attention. 

Multiple submissions in this issue testify to the 
breadth of the global reach and interest of the journal.  
COVID-19 continues to be with us in terms of 
understanding its associated complications even when 
active infection is on the wane.  Margarita Portilla Diaz 
and her colleagues inquired into musculoskeletal 
complications engendered in university professors in 
Colombia by remote working conditions, finding 
substantial health effects.  Seyed Reza Hosseini and his 
coworkers surveyed sleep quality and associated factors 
in elderly persons living in a community in Iran. 

The editors value informed discussion of differing 
points of view and offer the category of commentary to 
further that aim.  Drs. Nicholson, Dahlman and Carlough 
provide a perspective on the ongoing relevance of the 
medical missionary enterprise that is balanced, but 
illustrative of its virtues in meeting needs and 
sustainability in ways and in locations government and 
secular initiatives fail to serve.  Dr. Volodymyr 
Shablystyi and colleagues describe the roles several non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) - Doctors Without 
Borders, the International Committee of the Red Cross 
and Oxfam – have played during the war in Ukraine.  
Their account does not mention faith-based 
organizations which have also contributed in major ways 
to the ongoing humanitarian effort there, but the lessons 
learned from their analysis of the relationship of 
government under martial law with NGOs can inform 
FBO action and democratize aid.   

 

Two field reports inform us regarding faith-based 
global health interventions in two low-income countries:  
Supit, Mautang and Pangemanan report on a 
collaboration between school and university to benefit 
school health in Indonesia, and Daring, Ten Broek and 
colleagues show evidence on outcomes in a program to 
bolster adolescent appreciation of gender equality in 
Bangladesh.  An additional reflection by M. Shawn 
Morehead in the form of a meditation on dust inspired by 
personal experience in Afghanistan speaks of our 
common humanity and common need.   

In a letter-to-the-editor William Cayley responds to 
James Harries’ article Biomedical Services’ Fit Amongst 
People with Relational Worldviews, and a ‘Middle Road’ 
published in the previous issue.  He offers the biblical 
story of Daniel and his colleagues as captors in Babylon, 
suggesting an ancient and God-ordained precedent for 
clinical trials, which he argues are not beyond 
comprehension for people who hold indigenous or 
relational world views.  Harries’ response highlights the 
global variations which exist in the interpretation of both 
the biblical story line and health-related observations in 
nature. Our editors’ response contributes to the debate. 

Finally, Jessica Culver poetically prays for grace in 
the suffering and inconvenience occasioned by an injury, 
and the doxological hope that emerges from the Christian 
faith in the God who suffered and heals. 

. 

https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/757
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/757
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/747
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/659
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/751
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/751
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/749
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/749
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/761
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/741
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/741
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/767
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/767
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/745
https://journal.cjgh.org/index.php/cjgh/article/view/759