Faith Actors from Sub-Saharan Africa Share Perspectives on Trust and Health at Consultative Session
In June 2025, a consultative session on the Georgetown-Lancet Commission on Faith, Trust, and Health took place in Washington, DC, as a side event during the Christian Connections for International Health Conference.
Co-hosted by Friends of the Global Fight, the session convened over a dozen faith actors, including bishops and senior leaders of regional religious networks from across sub-Saharan Africa. Commission Co-Chair Deus Bazira and Commissioners Galen Carey and Carol Keehan also took part in the discussion.
The conversation centered on two key questions: how shifts in trust are impacting health, and where partnerships between faith and health sectors might offer solutions.
Changing Landscape of Trust
Participants spoke about the widespread decline in trust toward governments and health systems. Corruption, broken promises, and inconsistent messaging during COVID-19 were cited as factors that created or deepened skepticism.
“Trust was already fragile before the pandemic,” said a participant. “COVID-19 simply exposed those underlying vulnerabilities.”
Despite this erosion of confidence in health systems, faith-based organizations continue to be seen as dependable and grounded in the community. In many cases, faith actors are often the ones people turn to when government support falls short.
Yet, several participants expressed frustration at being treated as messengers rather than true partners with decision-making power.
“When partnerships feel one-sided or tokenistic, they do more harm than good,” said a participant.
Participants noted that faith-health collaborations should be rooted in mutual respect, with faith actors engaged from the earliest stages of any initiative.
At the same time, participants acknowledged that trust in faith actors is not guaranteed.
In some contexts, faith actors have been closely aligned with political elites, which has weakened their standing in the eyes of the communities they serve. One example described a bishop who accepted a luxury car and then remained silent during a period of political repression.
“When faith actors are seen as benefiting from the very systems that fail the people, they lose credibility,” said a participant.
Reimagining Faith-Health Relationships
When the discussion turned toward solutions, participants called for wide-ranging collaboration among governments, faith groups, NGOs, and the private sector.
In Angola, churches are working with the Ministry of Health to counter misinformation ahead of a planned malaria vaccine rollout by grounding education efforts in personal testimony. Another example described how a long-standing faith-based platform, originally created to respond to HIV and STDs, was later used for COVID-19 prevention messages.
A participant from Tanzania also spoke about the limits of top-down approaches and the importance of listening to communities that already have their own practices.
“People are not resistant to learning,” the participant said. “They want answers, and if we do not provide them, they will go looking elsewhere.”
Others shared experiences from Zambia, Uganda, Malawi, Burundi, and Ghana on family planning initiatives that began by understanding what each faith community cared about. Rather than assuming opposition, health officials engaged faith actors to clarify that concerns were often about specific methods and not family planning itself.
Closing Reflections
“These conversations give the Commission direction,” Bazira said. “We are not trying to solve everything, but we hope to add to the quality of knowledge and inform both policy and practice.”