The association of religion with advance care planning

Abstract

Personal preferences influence end-of-life (EOL) decision-making and are commonly associated with engagement in the advance care planning process. Completing an advance directive (AD) allows individuals to formally document and legally report their EOL care preferences. This study explored how two aspects of religion—personal religious beliefs and formal religion practices—may be associated with advance care planning. A national sample of healthy adults in the United States aged 50 years and older (n = 514; 74% cisgender women) completed surveys detailing their EOL preferences, advance care planning, personal religious beliefs, and formal religion practices. Using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), we find that a higher belief in God’s role at EOL was associated with a higher preference for life-prolonging measures. Using logistic regression, those with a higher belief in God’s role at EOL had lower odds of AD completion. Multiple dimensions of religion should be considered when studying health care preferences and decision-making.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

The University of Utah Institutional Review Board approved this study (IRB_00102758).

Data availability statement

Dataset used for these analyses are available by request from corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by a grant from the University of Utah Center on Aging.