A review of the complex intersection between religion, spirituality, and harm reduction
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Within substance use research, religion and spirituality (r/s) have been understudied in relation to harm reduction approaches. We perform a literature review to characterize various intersections between r/s and harm reduction. METHODS: We searched major databases, Google Scholar, and other sources for academic articles and gray literature on the intersection between r/s and harm reduction. We describe areas of overlap and tension as well as analyze the results using three tiers of proximity to lived/living experience. RESULTS: Of the 457 papers identified, 169 met final inclusion. Of these, 100 papers contained discussion of alignment between religious or spiritual values and harm reduction values, 39 discussed strategic uses of religious or spiritual resources, 22 discussed harm reduction practices in relation to substances with religious/spiritual relevance, such as psychedelics, and 8 discussed religious/spiritual support for harm reduction workers. Eighteen noted that content was coproduced with persons with lived/living experience, 75 of them noted content was informed by relationship with persons with lived/living experience, and in 76 no such engagement was mentioned. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: The relevance of r/s is not limited to abstinence-based models and has significance in the harm reduction literature. SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE: This is the first systematic study of the complex intersection between r/s and harm reduction. The results point to opportunities to further understand r/s as both barrier to and resource for harm reduction efforts, as well as how proximity to those with lived/living experience may influence alignment with harm reduction values.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.034 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.015 | 0.016 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".