Human Flourishing Program
12 Arrow Street, Suite 100
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States
Ordinary Academicians
Date of birth 06 July 1979
Place Chicago, IL, United States of America (America)
Nomination 04 December 2025
Field Epidemiology
Title John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health; Director, Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University
I received my doctorate in biostatistics from Harvard University in 2006, having previously studied mathematics, philosophy, theology, and finance at the University of Oxford and the University of Pennsylvania, and I have served on the faculty of the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health since 2009.
My work in epidemiology eventually led me to consider the psychological and social assets that preserve and promote health, and also more positive holisitc well-being outcomes beyond the absence of disease and illness. This change in perspective resulted in work on religious communities, on parenting practices, on forgiveness, on the role of love in shaping health and well-being, and eventually, in 2016, led to the founding of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University. The Program seeks to study and promote human flourishing, and to develop and implement systematic approaches to the synthesis of knowledge across disciplines.
My own work aims to create a “positive epidemiology,” wherein we study the distribution and determinants of well-being, and to expand the purview of public health to include the promotion of individual and societal flourishing. Work to carry this out requires drawing upon and integrating philosophy and theology with the methodologies, empirical studies, and theoretical and conceptual frameworks of the social and biomedical sciences. The Human Flourishing Program thus brings together psychologists, sociologists, education researchers, epidemiologists, psychiatrists, economists, and statisticians with bioethicists, philosophers, and theologians to study and promote human flourishing.
My work has involved the development of novel methodologies for causal inference and psychosocial measurement, along with the application of those methodologies to the social and biomedical sciences. This has included work in social and psychiatric epidemiology, the science of happiness and flourishing, and the study of religion and health. With regard to methodology, I have published books on Explanation in Causal Inference (Oxford University Press 2015) and Modern Epidemiology (Wolters Kluwer 2021); on the topic of well-being, I have published books on Measuring Well-Being (Oxford University Press 2021), A Handbook of Religion and Health (Oxford University Press 2024), and A Theology of Health (University of Notre Dame Press 2024); and have also published over 600 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
The work of the Human Flourishing Program eventually led to the development of a Global Flourishing Study, a longitudinal panel study of over 200,000 individuals in 22 countries, representing all six populated continents, with nationally representative samples in each country, and an intended five years of annual panel data collection, with waves 1-3 complete as of the end of 2025. The Global Flourishing Study is a collaboration between the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard and Baylor’s Institute for Studies of Religion, with data collection carried out by Gallup, and the data hosted as an open-access resource by the Center for Open Science. About a hundred papers have been published from the study to date and the hope is that the study will advance our knowledge of the distribution and determinants of well-being across the globe, and better enable us to promote flourishing.
MEMBERSHIP OF PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES
2024 Elected Member of the American Academy of Sciences & Letters
2021 Elected Member of the American Academy of Catholic Scholars and Artists
2021 Elected Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion
2021 Elected Fellow of the International Positive Psychology Association
2014 Elected Fellow of the American Statistical Association
HONOURS (CITATIONS, AWARDS, ETC.)
2025 Global Positive Health Researcher Award, International Positive Psychology Association
2020 Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Catholic University of America
2017 Presidents’ Award, Committee of Presidents of Statistical Societies (COPSS)
2017 John Snow Award, American Public Health Association
2014 Mortimer Spiegelman Award, American Public Health Association
PRINCIPAL PUBLICATIONS
Books:
VanderWeele, T.J. (2024). A Theology of Health: Wholeness and Human Flourishing. University of Notre Dame Press.
Koenig, H.K., VanderWeele, T.J., and Peteet, J.R. (2024). Handbook of Religion and Health. 3rd Edition. Oxford University Press.
Lee, M.T., Kubzansky, L.D., and VanderWeele, T.J. (2021). Measuring Well-Being. Oxford University Press.
Lash, T.L., VanderWeele, T.J., Haneuse, S., and Rothman, K.J. (2021). Modern Epidemiology. 4th Edition. Wolters Kluwer.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2015). Explanation in Causal Inference: Methods for Mediation and Interaction. Oxford University Press.
Articles:
VanderWeele, T. J., Padgett, R., Case, B., Cowden, R., Hanson, J., Hinton, C., Kurniati, N.M.T., Lomas, T., Long, K., Niemiec, R., Bechara, A.O., Rutledge, J.C., Teubner, J., Town, S., Wilkinson, R. and Lee, M.T. (2026). Love of neighbor assessment: validity, reliability, and a template for measurement. Frontiers in Psychology, 16:1575175.
VanderWeele, T.J. and Lee, M.T. (2025). Love and human flourishing. International Journal of Wellbeing, 15:4663.
VanderWeele, T. J., Johnson, B. R., et al. (2025). The Global Flourishing Study: study profile and initial results on flourishing. Nature Mental Health, 3:636-653.
VanderWeele, T. J., and Johnson, B.R. (2025). Multidimensional versus unidimensional approaches to well-being. Nature Human Behavior, 9:857-863.
VanderWeele, T.J. and Case, B.W. (2025). Academic flourishing and student formation. International Journal of Wellbeing, 15(2):5003.
VanderWeele, T.J. and Hinton, C. (2024). Metrics for education for flourishing: a framework. International Journal of Wellbeing, 14, Article 3197:1-35.
Ho, M. Y., Worthington, E., Cowden, R., Bechara, A. O., Chen, Z. J., Gunatirin, E. Y., Joynt, S., Khalanskyi, V.V., Korzhov, H., Kurniati, N.M.T., Rodriguez, N., Salnykova, A., Shtanko, L., Tymchenko, S., Voytenko, V.L., Zulkaida, A., Mathur, M. and VanderWeele, T.J. (2024). International REACH Forgiveness Intervention: A multi-site randomised controlled trial. BMJ Public Health, 2:e000072.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2023). On an analytic definition of love. Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 25:105-135.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2022). Constructed measures and causal inference: towards a new model of measurement for psychosocial constructs. Epidemiology, 33:141-151.
Balboni, T.A., VanderWeele, T.J., Doan-Soares, S.D., Long, K.N.G., Ferrell, B., Fitchett, G., Koenig, H.G., Bain, P., Puchalski, C., Steinhauser, K.E., Sulmasy, D.P., and Koh, H.K. (2022). Spirituality in serious illness and health. JAMA, 328:184-197.
Chen, Y., Kim, E.S., and VanderWeele, T.J. (2020). Religious service attendance and subsequent health and well-being throughout adulthood: evidence from three prospective cohorts. International Journal of Epidemiology, 49:2030–2040.
VanderWeele, T.J., Chen. Y., Long, K.N., Kim, E.S., Trudel-Fitzgerald, C., and Kubzansky, L.D. (2020). Positive epidemiology? Epidemiology, 31:189-193.
VanderWeele, T.J., McNeely, E., and Koh, H.K. (2019). Reimagining health: flourishing. JAMA, 321:1667-1668.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2019). Suffering and response: directions in empirical research. Social Science and Medicine, 224:58-66.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2019). Measures of community well-being: a template. International Journal of Community Well-Being, 2:253-275.
Chen, Y., Haines, J. Charlton, B., and VanderWeele, T.J. (2019). Positive parenting improves multiple aspects of health and well-being in young adulthood. Nature Human Behavior, 3:684-691.
Chen, Y. and VanderWeele, T.J. (2018). Associations of religious upbringing with subsequent health and well-being from adolescence to young adulthood: an outcome-wide analysis. American Journal of Epidemiology, 187:2355-2364.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2018). Is forgiveness a public health issue? American Journal of Public Health, 108:189-190.
VanderWeele, T.J. (2017). On the promotion of human flourishing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A., 31:8148-8156.
VanderWeele, T.J., Li, S., Tsai, A., and Kawachi, I. (2016). Association between religious service attendance and lower suicide among U.S. women. JAMA Psychiatry, 73:845-851.