Biography

Jeff Levin, Ph.D., M.P.H., FACE, an epidemiologist and religious scholar, holds a distinguished chair at Baylor University, where he is University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health, Professor of Medical Humanities, and Director of the Program on Religion and Population Health at the Institute for Studies of Religion, and Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Institute for Global Human Flourishing. He also serves as an Affiliated Member of the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Dr. Levin received his A.B. from Duke University in 1981, graduating Magna Cum Laude and with Distinction in both Religion and Sociology, under the mentorship of the late Dr. C. Eric Lincoln. He received his M.P.H. in 1983 from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, and his Ph.D. in Preventive Medicine and Community Health in 1987 from the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at The University of Texas Medical Branch. He also completed a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from 1987 to 1989 at the Institute of Gerontology of the University of Michigan, and has advanced training in quantitative methods from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Dr. Levin was the first scientist to systematically review the research literature on religion and health, and the first scientist funded by the NIH to conduct research on the topic. His studies have pioneered basic research in the epidemiology of religion and on the impact of religion on the physical and mental health and general well-being of older adults. His research has been funded by several grants from the NIH, and from private sources including the American Medical Association. He is a member of the Society for Epidemiologic Research, the International Epidemiological Association, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and is an elected Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology, the Gerontological Society of America, and the International Society for Science and Religion.

Dr. Levin is the author or co-author of over 270 scholarly publications, as well as more than 200 conference presentations and invited lectures and addresses, mostly on the role of religion in physical and mental health and aging. These include authoring, editing, or co-editing 11 books:

Religion & Health