What roles do a patient’s spiritual and religious beliefs and practices play in coping with disease, medical decision-making and other health-related processes? A panel discussion at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy tomorrow, Dec. 3, will address that topic, which has relevance for patients, practitioners, scholars and lay people.

The two-hour event, titled "Faith in the Corridors of Medicine," will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Baker Hall's Doré Commons on the Rice campus, 6100 Main St. For directions, go to www.bakerinstitute.org/media/media_directions.cfm.

The panel discussion is the inaugural event of the Religion and Public Life Program, which is part of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and directed by Elaine Howard Ecklund, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and a Rice scholar at the Baker Institute. 

The event will bring together top scholars in religion and health care for a panel discussion on the intersection of faith and medicine, including Ecklund, who authored "Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think," which examines attitudes in the nation's scientific community toward religious beliefs.

Ecklund will be joined on the panel by William Martin, the Harry and Hazel Chavanne Senior Fellow in Religion and Public Policy at the Baker Institute; Wendy Cadge, associate professor of sociology at Brandeis University; Farr Curlin, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Chicago; and John Graham, director of the Institute for Spirituality and Health.

The event is sponsored by the Religion and Public Life Program at the Kinder Institute, the Baker Institute Religion and Public Policy Program, the Institute for Spirituality and Health, and the Baker Institute Science and Technology Policy Program.