{"doi":"10.1093/ije/dyaa120","title":"Religious-service attendance and subsequent health and well-being throughout adulthood: evidence from three prospective cohorts","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Religious-service attendance has been linked with a lower risk of all-cause mortality, suicide and depression. Yet, its associations with other health and well-being outcomes remain less clear. METHODS: Using longitudinal data from three large prospective cohorts in the USA, this study examined the association between religious-service attendance and a wide range of subsequent physical health, health behaviour, psychological distress and psychological well-being outcomes in separate cohorts of young, middle-aged and older adults. All analyses adjusted for socio-demographic characteristics, prior health status and prior values of the outcome variables whenever data were available. Bonferroni correction was used to correct for multiple testing. RESULTS: Estimates combining data across cohorts suggest that, compared with those who never attended religious services, individuals who attended services at least once per week had a lower risk of all-cause mortality by 26% [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.65 to 0.84], heavy drinking by 34% (95% CI: 0.59 to 0.73) and current smoking by 29% (95% CI: 0.63 to 0.80). Service attendance was also inversely associated with a number of psychological-distress outcomes (i.e. depression, anxiety, hopelessness, loneliness) and was positively associated with psychosocial well-being outcomes (i.e. positive affect, life satisfaction, social integration, purpose in life), but was generally not associated with subsequent disease, such as hypertension, stroke, and heart disease. CONCLUSIONS: Decisions on religious participation are generally not shaped principally by health. Nevertheless, for individuals who already hold religious beliefs, religious-service attendance may be a meaningful form of social integration that potentially relates to greater longevity, healthier behaviours, better mental health and greater psychosocial well-being.","journal":"International Journal of Epidemiology","year":2020,"id":50618,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":186,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9434,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":249622,"name":"Eric S. Kim","orcid":"0000-0002-1510-8976","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":231697,"name":"Tyler J. VanderWeele","orcid":"0000-0002-6112-0239","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":235220,"name":"Ying Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-4780-4642","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T20:39:29.006085Z","pmid":"32793951","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}