Religion plays a central role in how illness and healing are understood in many parts of the world, including Ghana, where practices such as prayer, pastoral counsel, and spiritual interpretation often shape health decisions alongside medical care. When Ghanaian immigrants migrate to the United States, where healthcare is organized primarily around professional medical authority and religion is treated as a private matter, they must navigate different systems of meaning surrounding health and care. This dissertation will examine how Ghanaian immigrants in the United States interpret health, illness, and healing in relation to religion and medicine, and how these interpretations shape the health practices they report engaging in. Using in-depth interviews with Ghanaian immigrants and participant observation in Ghanaian immigrant churches in Houston, Texas, the study will examine how Ghanaian immigrants narrate illness and healing and how congregations shape their understandings of care.
By foregrounding religion as a meaning-making framework, this study contributes to scholarship on religion, health, and immigration, extends African Diaspora Studies through a U.S.-based perspective on health interpretation, and offers insight into how immigrant congregations shape approaches to health, healing, and care within North American Christianity.