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The setting: 83 reports of healing related to prayer (HP) were evaluated between 2015 and 2020 in the Netherlands. Research questions: What are the medical and experiential findings? Do we find medically remarkable and/or medically unexplained healings? Which explanatory frameworks can help us to understand the findings? Methods: 83 reported healings were investigated using medical files and patient narratives. An independent medical assessment team consisting of five medical consultants, representing different fields of medicine, evaluated the associated files of 27 selected cases. Fourteen of them received in-depth interviews. Instances of healing could be classified as ‘medically remarkable’ or ‘medically unexplained’. Subsequent analysis was transdisciplinary, involving medical, experiential, theological and conceptual perspectives. Results: the diseases reported covered the entire medical spectrum. Eleven healings were evaluated as ‘medically remarkable’, while none were labelled as ‘medically unexplained’. A pattern with recurrent characteristics emerged, whether the healings were deemed medically remarkable or not: instantaneity and unexpectedness of healing, often with emotional and physical manifestations and a sense of ‘being overwhelmed’. The HP experiences were interpreted as acts of God, with a transformative impact. Positive effects on health and socio-religious quality of life persisted in most cases after a two and four year follow-up. Conclusions: the research team found it difficult to frame data in medical terms, especially the instantaneity and associated experiences in many healings. We need a broader, multi-perspective model to understand the findings. Horizontal epistemology, valuing both ‘subjective’ (experiential) and ‘objective’ data, may be helpful. An open dialogue between science and religion may help too. There is an analogy with healing narratives in the Bible and throughout church history. Future studies and documentation are needed to verify and clarify the pattern we found.

Participatory action research (PAR) advocates end-user involvement in various societal domains. This paper aims to identify and analyse impacts of PAR involving older persons as co-researchers, and how these impacts spread and are enhanced throughout the research process and after its completion. By impact we mean transformational change throughout and after a PAR study. We present a qualitative community-based research project involving older people who live in sparsely populated areas in the Netherlands, and explore three types of PAR impact: personal, interpersonal and community impacts. We demonstrate how these impacts unfold through expanding circles, from a personal to a community level, and how these circles enhance each other. The project was conducted by a PAR team consisting of one researcher and seven co-researchers. The data were collected from observations, interviews and minutes of meetings, which the team subsequently analysed. The results are presented as a narrative account, whereby four project stages are followed by reflection on the impact it made. The discussion addresses the circles of impact, and whether and how they can strengthen each other in community-based projects involving older people. The concluding remarks address the influence of group dynamics on PAR, whether frail older adults can be expected to take an active part in PAR projects and the extent to which the results from such community-based PAR projects can be generalised.

PurposeResearchers who work in partnership with older adults in participatory studies often experience various advantages, but also complex ethical questions or even encounter obstacles during the research process. This paper aims to provide insights into the value of an intersectional lens in participatory research to understand how power plays out within a mixed research team of academic and community co-researchers.Design/methodology/approachFour academic researchers reflected in a case-study approach in a dialogical way on two critical case examples with the most learning potential by written dialogical and via face-to-face meetings in duos or trios. This study used an intersectionality-informed analysis.FindingsThis study shows that the intersectional lens helped the authors to understand the interactions of key players in the study and their different social locations. Intersections of age, gender, ethnicity/class and professional status stood out as categories in conflict. In hindsight, forms of privilege and oppression became more apparent. The authors also understood that they reproduced traditional power dynamics within the group of co-researchers and between academic and community co-researchers that did not match their mission for horizontal relations. This study showed that academics, although they wanted to work toward social inclusion and equality, were bystanders and people who reproduced power relations at several crucial moments. This was disempowering for certain older individuals and social groups and marginalized their voices and interests.Originality/valueTill now, not many scholars wrote in-depth about race- and age-related tensions in partnerships in participatory action research or related approaches, especially not about tensions in research with older people.

This article addresses cases of remarkable recoveries related to healing after prayer. We sought to investigate how people who experienced remarkable recoveries re-construct and give meaning to these experiences, and examine the role that epistemic frameworks available to them, play in this process. Basing ourselves on horizontal epistemology and using grounded theory, we conducted this qualitative empirical research in the Netherlands in 2016–2021. It draws on 14 in-depth interviews. These 14 cases were selected from a group of 27 cases, which were evaluated by a medical assessment team at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre. Each of the participants had experienced a remarkable recovery during or after prayer. The analysis of the interviews, which is based on the grounded theory approach, resulted in three overarching themes, placing possible explanations of the recoveries within (1) the medical discourse, (2) biographical discourse, and (3) a discourse of spiritual and religious transformation. Juxtaposition of these explanatory frameworks provides a way to understand better the transformative experience that underlies remarkable recoveries. Uncertainty regarding an explanation is a component of knowing and can facilitate a dialogue between various domains of knowledge.

The purpose of this article is to enhance our understanding of prayer healing by studying a case which was described as a 'remarkable healing' by a medical assessment team at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre (UMC) in the Netherlands. This retrospective, case-based study of prayer healing investigated numerous reported healings using both medical files and patient narratives. A medical assessment team evaluated the associated medical files, as well as any experiential data. The instances of healing could be classified as 'remarkable' or 'unexplained.' Experiential data were obtained by qualitative, in-depth interviews. The study was transdisciplinary in nature, involving medical, psychological, theological, and philosophical perspectives. The object was to understand such healings within the broader framework of the science-religion debate. We present the case of a female patient, born in 1959, with Parkinson disease who experienced instantaneous, nearly complete healing in 2012 after intercessory prayer. At that point the disease was at an advanced stage, rapidly progressive, with major debilitating symptoms. High doses of oral medication were required. Following this healing there was no recurrence of her former symptoms, while the remaining symptoms continued to improve. She regained all of her capacities at work, as well as in daily life. The medical assessment team described her recovery as 'remarkable.' The patient reported that she had always 'lived with God,' and that at a point when she had given up hope, 'life was given back to her.' This recovery did not make her immune to other illnesses and suffering, but it did strengthen her belief that God cares about human beings. This remarkable healing and its context astonished the patient, her family, and her doctors. The clinical course was extraordinary, contradicting data from imaging studies, as well as the common understanding of this disease. This case also raised questions about medical assumptions. Any attempt to investigate such healings requires the involvement of other disciplines. A transdisciplinary approach that includes experiential knowledge would be helpful. Against the background of the science-religion debate, we feel that the most helpful approach would be one of complementarity and dialogue, rather than stoking controversy.