Exploring why people in Mozambique increasingly turn to church prophets for spiritual healing instead of traditional healers has earned James Pfeiffer, assistant professor of anthropology at Case Western Reserve University, the Steven Polgar Prize from Medical Anthropology Quarterly.

The Polgar Prize honors the best article that has appeared in an annual volume of the journal published by the medical anthropology section of the American Anthropological Association.

"The African Independent Church in Mozambique: Healing the Affliction of Inequality" was based on research Pfeiffer conducted while working in 1993-1995 and 1998 in the African country as county representative for the Health Alliance International, a U.S. nongovernmental organization affiliated with the University of Washington's School of Public Health.

Pfeiffer interviewed church members, pastors, prophet (church) healers and traditional healers in the city of Chimoio in central Mozambique about this move away from traditional practices to seeking help from an increasing number of Pentecostal-like churches. He also collected oral illness narratives and conversion stories from church members to understand this change.

His research from the 1990s became the foundation for a two-year, National Science Foundation-funded project to conduct an in-depth study of more than 600 people about whether the phenomenal increase in indigenous African-Christian churches with their prophet healers is related to social inequalities resulting from the "traumatic economic transformation" in Mozambique.

His findings from additional six-week field trips to Mozambique in 2000, 2002 and 2003 will appear in future articles accepted for publication in the journals, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Human Organization and Culture, Medicine and Psychology.

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