The DOI matches its Crossref record; 68 of the 68 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Religious Attendance and Cause of Death over 31 Years
Abstract
Objective: Frequent attendance at religious services has been reported by several studies to be independently associated with lower all-cause mortality. The present study aimed to clarify relationships between religious attendance and mortality by examining how associations of religious attendance with several specific causes of death may be explained by demographics, socioeconomic status, health status, health behaviors, and social connections. Method: Associations between frequent religious attendance and major types of cause-specific mortality between 1965 and 1996 were examined for 6545 residents of Alameda County, California. Sequential proportional hazards regressions were used to study survival time until mortality from circulatory, cancer, digestive, respiratory, or external causes. Results: After adjusting for age and sex, infrequent (never or less than weekly) attenders had significantly higher rates of circulatory, cancer, digestive, and respiratory mortality ( p < 0.05), but not mortality due to external causes. Differences in cancer mortality were explained by prior health status. Associations with other outcomes were weakened but not eliminated by including health behaviors and prior health status. In fully adjusted models, infrequent attenders had significantly or marginally significantly higher rates of death from circulatory (relative hazard [RH] = 1.21, 95 percent confidence interval [CI] = 1.02 to 1.45), digestive (RH = 1.99, p < 0.10, 95 percent CI = 0.98 to 4.03), and respiratory (RH = 1.66, p < 0.10, 95 percent CI = 0.92 to 3.02) mortality. Conclusions: These results are consistent with the view that religious involvement, like high socioeconomic status, is a general protective factor that promotes health through a variety of causal pathways. Further study is needed to determine whether the independent effects of religion are mediated by psychological states or other unknown factors.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“The evidence from rigorously designed population studies and from a seminal meta-analysis suggested the existence of an independent association between organizational religiosity (i.e., religious service attendance) and CVD mortality (Chida et al., 2009; Hummer et al., 1999; Oman et al., 2002).”
From Advancing our understanding of religion and spirituality in the context of behavioral medicine (2017) · cites this paper as Oman et al., 2002
Citations
Cites
Social Relationships and Health
House, J. S., Landis, K. R., & Umberson, D. (1988) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.3399889 · Cited by 7,073
Protective and Damaging Effects of Stress Mediators
McEwen, B. S. (1998) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm199801153380307 · Cited by 6,733 · cited 2×
“These findings support the view that religious involvement serves as a general health-promotion factor that, like socioeconomic status, operates through multiple causal pathways— perhaps partially through reduced allostatic load and improved psychoneuroimmunologic and psychoneuroendocrinologic regulation [57].”
BackgroundUnraveling the mystery of health: how people manage stress and stay well
Antonovsky, A. (1987) · SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks · doi:10.4135/9781446221129.n9 · Cited by 5,299
Schafer, J. L. (1999) · Statistical Methods in Medical Research · doi:10.1177/096228029900800102 · Cited by 3,949
Handbook of Religion and Health
Koenig, H., McCullough, M., & Larson, D. (2001) · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195118667.001.0001 · Cited by 2,581
Socioeconomic status and health: The challenge of the gradient
Adler, N. E., Boyce, T., Chesney, M. A., Cohen, S., Folkman, S., Kahn, R. L., & Syme, S. L. (1994) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.49.1.15 · Cited by 2,383
Modeling and variable selection in epidemiologic analysis
Greenland, S. (1989) · American Journal of Public Health · doi:10.2105/ajph.79.3.340 · Cited by 2,208
The psychology of religion and coping : theory, research, practice
Pargament, K. (1998) · Review of Religious Research · doi:10.2307/3512468 · Cited by 1,680
The Religion-Health Connection: Evidence, Theory, and Future Directions
Ellison, C. G., & Levin, J. S. (1998) · Health Education & Behavior · doi:10.1177/109019819802500603 · Cited by 1,496
HOUSE, J. S., ROBBINS, C., & METZNER, H. L. (1982) · American Journal of Epidemiology · doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a113387 · Cited by 1,381 · cited 1×
“Age and Gender Differences Weaker protective effects of religious attendance among men than among women were reported earlier for a subset of this cohort [8] and have also been reported in other cohorts [14, 62].”
Result
Research works printed but not linked: 9
- Miller WR, 1998, Scientific research on spirituality and health: A consensus report, 68
- Frank J, 1975, Johns Hopkins Medical Journal, 137, 127
- Thoresen C, 1998, Scientific research on spirituality and health: A consensus report, 104
- Idler E, 1999, Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research, 75
- Greenland S, 1998, Modern epidemiology, 225
- SAS Institute, 1996, SAS stat software: Changes and enhancements for release 6.12
- Fetzer Institute/National Institute on Aging Working Group, 1999, Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research
- Thoresen CE, 2001, Faith and health, 15
- Barnard D, 1995, Academic Medicine, 70, 806
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Handbook of Religion and Health
Koenig, H. G., VanderWeele, T. J., & Peteet, J. R. (2023) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780190088859.001.0001 · Cited by 1,160
Religion and spirituality: Linkages to physical health.
Powell, L. H., Shahabi, L., & Thoresen, C. E. (2003) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.58.1.36 · Cited by 1,093
Religion, Spirituality, and Medicine: Research Findings and Implications for Clinical Practice
Koenig, H. G. (2004) · Southern Medical Journal · doi:10.1097/01.smj.0000146489.21837.ce · Cited by 441
Religiousness/Spirituality and Health: A Meaning Systems Perspective
Park, C. L. (2007) · Journal of Behavioral Medicine · doi:10.1007/s10865-007-9111-x · Cited by 438
Religiosity/Spirituality and Mortality
Chida, Y., Steptoe, A., & Powell, L. H. (2009) · Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics · doi:10.1159/000190791 · Cited by 409
Metadata
- Authors
- Oman, D., Kurata, J. H., Strawbridge, W. J., & Cohen, R. D.
- Affiliations
- Human Population Laboratory (US)
- California Health and Human Services Agency (US)
- Corresponding author
- Oman, Doug
- ORCID
- Oman, Doug
- Venue
- The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2002-03
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 69-89
- ISSN
- 0033-278X (ISSN-L)
- 0091-2174
- 1541-3527
- OpenAlex
- W1993055876
- Cited by
- 189
- References
- 67
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 44 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 6 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 6 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 8.52
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute on Aging (R37AG011375, 1R37 AG-11375)
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (T32 HL07365-21, T32HL007365)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Religion and Society Interactions
- Social Sciences › Health › Health disparities and outcomes
- Keywords
- religious service attendance, cause-specific mortality, circulatory disease mortality, cancer mortality, respiratory mortality, socioeconomic status, health behavior, social connectedness, health status, religion and health
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Age Factors, Aged, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Health Status, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Middle Aged, Mortality, Religion, Sex Factors, Social Behavior
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
