Biography
Jeff Levin, Ph.D., M.P.H., 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. He also serves as Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine and 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. In 2002, he was elected a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America; in 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion; and in 2021, he was elected a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology,
Dr. Levin is the author or co-author of over 250 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 in Aging and Health: Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Frontiers (1994)
Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (1999)
God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality-Healing Connection (2001)
Religion in the Lives of African Americans: Social, Psychological, and Health Perspectives (2004)
Faith, Medicine, and Science: A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. David B. Larson (2005)
Divine Love: Perspectives from the World’s Religious Traditions (2010)
Healing to All Their Flesh: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Spirituality, Theology, and Health (2012)
Judaism and Health: A Handbook of Practical, Professional and Scholarly References (2013)
Upon These Three Things: Jewish Perspectives on Loving God (2015)
Religion and the Social Sciences: Basic and Applied Research Perspectives (2018)
Religion and Medicine: A History of the Encounter Between Humanity’s Two Greatest Institutions (2020)