Jeff Levin, MPH, PhD. The power of love. Interview by Bonnie Horrigan

Jeff Levin is an epidemiologist and writer living in Kansas. He was trained in religion, sociology, public health, preventive medicine, and gerontology at Duke University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Texas Medical Branch, and the University of Michigan. From 1989 to 1997 he served on the faculty of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va. Dr Levin pioneered basic research on the epidemiology of religion. He has been funded by several National Institute of Health (NIH) grants, totaling more than $1 million in support. He has also received funding from private sources including the American Medical Association and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Dr Levin is a senior research fellow of the National Institute for Healthcare Research; an advisory board member of the Center on Aging, Religion, and Spirituality; and past president of the International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine. He has been chair 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, and is a member of the editorial boards of several peer-reviewed scientific journals including Alternative Therapies. Dr Levin is the author of more than 110 scholarly publications, including 5 books. These include his edited book Religion in Aging and Health (Sage Publications); the newly published Essentials of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins), which he edited with Dr Wayne Jonas; and the forthcoming God, Faith, and Health (John Wiley & Sons). Alternative Therapies interviewed Dr Levin at his home in Topeka, Kan, where he lives with his wife, Dr Lea Steele Levin.