Biography

Jeff Levin, Ph.D., M.P.H., an epidemiologist and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, is the pioneering scientist whose research beginning in the 1980s helped to create the field of religion, spirituality, and health.  He left a successful academic career in 1997 to devote his full-time efforts to writing, research, and consulting.

Dr. Levin received his A.B. from Duke University in 1981, graduating Magna Cum Laude and with Distinction in both Religion and Sociology. 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 an NIH-funded Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from 1987 to 1989 at the Institute of Gerontology of the University of Michigan, and has additional advanced training in quantitative methods from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan.

From 1989 to 1997, Dr. Levin, a social epidemiologist and gerontologist, served on the faculty of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Virginia, the last six years as Associate Professor. He was the first scientist to systematically review and critique the empirical literature on the physical health effects of religious involvement. His studies have pioneered basic research in the epidemiology of religion and on the impact of religion on the health and well-being of older adults. His research has been funded by several National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, totaling over $1 million in support, and he also has received funding from private sources, including the American Medical Association (AMA) Education and Research Foundation.

Dr. Levin is professionally affiliated with leading organizations at the interface of spirituality, science, and medicine. These include serving as the principal Research Area Consultant in the area of public health and medicine for the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (IRUL) in Stony Brook, NY; a member of the Extended Faculty of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), in Petaluma, CA; and, a Past President of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM). He has served as Chairman of the NIH Working Group on Quantitative Methods in Alternative Medicine, is a former member of the NIH Workgroup on Measures of Religiousness and Spirituality for the National Institute on Aging, and is a current or past member of the Editorial Boards of several peer-reviewed scientific journals, including the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences; The Gerontologist; the Journal of Religion, Spirituality & Aging; the Journal of Mindbody States; Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine; Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine; and EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America, in recognition of outstanding career achievement and exemplary contributions to the field of gerontology.

Dr. Levin is the author or co-author of over 150 scholarly publications, as well as over 130 conference presentations and invited lectures and addresses, most of which deal with the role of religion in physical and mental health and aging. He has published five books, most notably God, Faith, and Health:  Exploring the Spirituality-Healing Connection (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001).  He is also editor of Religion in Aging and Health:  Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Frontiers (Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications, 1994); co-editor of Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Philadelphia, PA:  Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 1999) and Faith, Medicine, and Science:  A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. David B. Larson (New York:  The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2005); and, co-author of Religion in the Lives of African Americans:  Social, Psychological, and Health Perspectives (Thousand Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications, 2004). According to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), over the past 25 years Dr. Levin has been one of the most highly cited social scientists in the world.

Dr. Levin has lectured nationally and internationally on most aspects of the interface of religion and health--scientific, clinical, methodological, historical, theological, metaphysical, and with respect to public health and health policy. His research has been featured in many newspapers and magazines, including USA Today, The Washington Post, Newsday, JAMA, Modern Maturity, Tikkun, Moment, Spirituality and Health, and in cover stories in Time, Readers’ Digest, and Macleans, and on national radio and television, including NPR, PBS, CBC, CTV, and CBN. His biography is included in Who’s Who in Theology & Science, Who’s Who in Science and Engineering, and International Who’s Who in Medicine. He is a recipient of both the 1996 and 1997 Templeton Prize for Exemplary Papers in Religion and the Medical Sciences, and of several named or endowed lectureships. In 1997, he served as Distinguished Lecturer in Gerontology at Duke University Medical Center, and delivered the First Annual K.J. Lee Fellowship Lecture in Complementary and Alternative Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. In 2003, he delivered the First Annual David B. Larson Memorial Lecture in Religion and Health at Duke University Medical Center and the Sixth Annual Richard J. DeBottis Memorial Lecture in Gerontology at the University of Houston. In 2004, he delivered the Second Annual Blair Justice Lecture in Mind-Body Medicine and Public Health at the University of Texas School of Public Health. In 2006, he delivered the Fifth Annual Spirituality and Health Forum Lecture at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

Dr. Levin lives in rural Kansas with his wife, Dr. Lea Steele. Dr. Steele, an epidemiologist and human ecologist, is former Scientific Director of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and is Adjunct Associate Professor in the College of Human Ecology at Kansas State University.