Forgiveness as a Potential Public Health Resource: Reflections on Complexities and Possibilities in Dialogue with and

In this commentary, we bring together an interdisciplinary group of voices to engage reflections by Lemon (2026) and Tsai (2026) on Cowden, Fung, et al.’s (2026) article estimating potential causal effects of hypothetical forgiveness shift scenarios on multidimensional well-being. We explore some of the conceptual, methodological, and practical tensions that arise when a psychosocial exposure (such as forgiveness) is viewed through a public health lens, including issues related to conceptualization and measurement in epidemiological studies, translation of hypothetical shifts into population-level engagement, intervention mechanisms and heterogeneity, and scalable implementation of resources. With psychosocial exposures such as forgiveness, we suggest that hypothetical shift analyses primarily serve as heuristic epidemiologic tools that inspire us to imagine how health and well-being might be influenced if forgiveness were more common in the population. Adoption of a public health approach to forgiveness may be most appropriate when multipronged, layered, and context-sensitive forgiveness resources are offered with the principal aim of providing individuals and communities with an expanded range of voluntary opportunities to engage with forgiveness. Such efforts may involve a “both/and” implementation framework that integrates more backward-looking pathways (e.g., interventions to address unresolved interpersonal hurts) with more forward-looking pathways (e.g., educational programs aimed at cultivating forgiveness-related capacities) as complementary approaches to supporting individual, relational, and communal flourishing across the lifespan. This type of strategy is compatible with a fuller societal and public health approach to addressing wrongdoing, one that includes forgiveness but is also sensitive to issues of (among other factors) justice, accountability, redress, and subsequent victim-offender relations. If we can remain attentive to the diverse ways in which forgiveness is understood, valued, and practiced across cultures, traditions, and communities, we may be able to strengthen population-level engagement with forgiveness without reducing it to a self-sufficient or merely instrumental public health strategy.