Jeff Levin, Ph.D., M.P.H., an epidemiologist and former medical school professor, is the pioneering scientist whose research beginning in the 1980s helped to create the field of religion and health. He left a successful academic career in 1997 to devote his full-time efforts to writing, research, and consulting. He was the first scientist to systematically review and critique the empirical literature on the health effects of religious involvement. His research has been funded by several NIH grants, and he also has received funding from private sources, including the American Medical Association and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Dr. Levin has served as chairman of the NIH Working Group on Quantitative Methods in Alternative Medicine, as president of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine, and as an editorial board member of several peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences, The Gerontologist, Journal of Religious Gerontology, and Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine. He has authored over 130 scholarly publications, and over 120 conference presentations and invited lectures and addresses, mostly on the role of religion in physical and mental health and aging. He has published four other books: God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality-Healing Connection, Religion in Aging and Health: Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Frontiers, Faith Matters: A Festschrift in Honor of Dr. David B. Larson, and Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and lives in rural Kansas.
