Dr. VanderWeele is the Director of Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program and Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion. He holds degrees in mathematics, philosophy, theology, finance, and biostatistics from the University of Oxford, University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. Tyler’s research spans epidemiology, the science of happiness and human flourishing, and the study of religion and health. Tyler’s latest book, A Theology of Health: Wholeness and Human Flourishing, explores the concept of health and well-being from a more holistic perspective, including the physical, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions of humanity. Tyler joins the podcast to explain what it means to be healthy, and the difference between the health of the human body and the health of a whole person.

Transcripts of our episodes are made available as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

Tom: Tyler, welcome to the show.

Tyler: It’s wonderful to be with you here, Tom.

Tom: Yeah, thank you. I wonder if we start off by telling me, where did you grow up? And what are the real joys and passions that you cultivated when you were a kid?

Tyler: So, I grew up in Chicago. I was there till age 12. My father kind of went through a midlife crisis and then entered microfinance development work, and we lived in Costa Rica, Bulgaria, and Austria. Over that time, I came to enjoy tennis and classical music, reading, and various intellectual pursuits, which have never quite left me.

Tom: And did you learn several languages when you were growing up?

Tyler: I studied eight in total, but I’m somewhat embarrassed to say that really, I’m only fluent in English.

Tom: Uh, huh.

Tyler: Testament Greek might be my second-best language at this stage.

Tom: Yeah. What were the subject areas that, as you got to this period in your life, you gravitated to the most?

Tyler: High school is a bit of a journey for me. I was interested in pursuing computer science at first, but then I started thinking about engineering and economics, and I realized what I loved about all of these. Subjects were the mathematics involved. And since I didn’t really know what I wanted to pursue after that, and that mathematics unified them, I thought maybe I’d start with mathematics and then figure out how to use it afterward.

Tom: A lot of people know you for your research in epidemiology, biostatistics, and mathematics, but maybe a few people don’t know that you also got an undergraduate degree in philosophy and theology; what kinds of questions and interests inspired you to study those areas as well?

Tyler: Yeah, so again, I was interested in mathematics and applying mathematics, but I was studying at the University of Oxford, and they seemed to have a real strength, obviously, in the humanities. I had always been very interested and read on my own matters of philosophy and theology, but being there at Oxford, it seemed a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of the extraordinary strengths of the university and those subjects as well.

So, I did end up pursuing it. A second bachelor’s degree in, philosophy and theology as well. At that time, it was purely out of interest in enrichment. but those studies and the foundational knowledge and capacities I acquired from them turned out to be useful in my academic career as that has.

Tom: Yeah. Talk to me about how your interest in mathematics and statistics led to applying those skills in public health and epidemiology.

Tyler: Yeah. So, that was a bit of a journey for me as well. I began doctoral studies in finance first as what I thought was an intriguing application, of mathematics, and about six months into that, I realized that that was not what I wanted to do so I started exploring other fields.

Possibilities and, met the, chair of the biostatistics department at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was studying at the time, learned more about the field, got some research experience at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, started taking, Some courses in biostatistics and epidemiology applied to doctoral programs and ended up in a doctoral program in biostatistics at Harvard, again, hoping to find a way to apply mathematics to contribute, to society.

And so when I was recruited back to Harvard in 2009, it was in fact, the epidemiology department, which, recruited meson while my degree is not in epidemiology, it’s in biostatistics, my primary faculty appointment now is in epidemiology, and I do a mix of, methods development, but, also trying to apply that to understand the distribution and determinants of health, but also more broadly, well-being and flourishing.

Tom: So, you’re the director of the human flourishing program there at Harvard. It’s probably a program that, most people haven’t heard of. So, I’m curious what the backstory is how does a program come to study something as big and all-encompassing as human flourishing.

Tyler: Yeah, so that too was a journey while I was at University of Chicago, I started thinking about questions of how. faith, which has personally been so important to, my life, intersected with my discipline and public health. And, during that time, I began reading some of the studies on religion and health, and much to my surprise, there were hundreds, even thousands, tens of thousands of studies on this, which I simply hadn’t really come across during my graduate studies at, the School of Public Health and Harvard.

And it seemed clear at the time that, While the two were associated, the open questions were, is this association causal, and if so, what are the mechanisms? And those were precisely, the types of, methodologic questions I was trying to address. So, when I arrived at Harvard, I got a small grant from the, John Templeton Foundation to start up a seminar series on, religion.

And public health. the grant was announced at one of our faculty meetings and the faculty member came up afterwards and said, you know, Tyler, somewhere buried in the nurse’s health study data.

It’s a question on religious service attendance. No one’s ever used it. You should look. So, sure enough, I did, and it was measured every four years, in fact. So, I had the ideal data set waiting for me at Harvard. So, over the years, ran several studies looking at, religious service attendance and health and using, very good data and some of the most rigorous methods suggested that religious service attendance is associated with declines in, all-cause mortality and depression, big effects on suicide.

And I thought these are big effects on important outcomes. Why aren’t we talking about this more? That led to work on other factors that I thought might be shaping population health that we were ignoring, such as forgiveness or parenting practices. And then I started thinking about what outcomes are we ignoring?

We study physical health and income very well, these are important things, but people care about more than that. They care about being happy and having a sense of meaning in life and relationships and trying to be a good person. Why aren’t we studying these other aspects of human life and well-being with the same level of rigor that we do, health and income.

And so it was those sorts of considerations which led to the human flourishing program to study the distribution and determinants of not just health, but well-being or flourishing, more generally, recognizing that to do this well, we needed to draw upon the deep traditions within the humanities, within philosophy, within theology to inform our work, to inform our measure development, to inform our hypotheses and to engage with.

Tom: You and your colleagues have been studying human flourishing all over the world. So not just the United States, but something like 22 different countries. There’s a lot of different cultures. People have a lot of different. I’m curious: what are some of the most interesting findings you’ve come across in studying such a broad number of countries and cultures?

Tyler: So, some of the questions we’re trying to ask are, you know, what are the social or political or economic or. religious or childhood experiences, determinants of different aspects of flourishing and, does this vary depending on whether we’re looking at happiness or, meaning in life or, character or, income.

And I think one of the fascinating things, in the work we’ve been doing to date is how Different countries are flourishing in different ways. It’s not a uniform picture. it’s not as though those countries that are doing well are doing well in all regards and those countries that are doing poorly in one aspect are doing poorly across the board.

No, one finds, for example, that levels of happiness and life satisfaction are higher in, richer developed countries but, intriguingly one finds the reverse with meaning and purpose. Meaning and purpose reported higher. In poor developing countries and the richer developed world and I think this leads to interesting and important questions about how we can carry out economic development in ways that don’t compromise meaning and purpose.

Possibly similar questions about close social relationships or character and pro sociality. So, there’s some intriguing, results which we’ll be, releasing more in full, early next, year, but I, I do hope that it leads to deeper reflection on, what is it that we’re seeking and how should these different aspects of flourishing be prioritized in our policy effort.

Yeah, it is fascinating to think that you can kind of tease apart being, relatively or, very happy on a day-to-day basis versus stepping back and asking. Am I leading a meaningful life and then answering those questions can lead to such a different, conclusions. Do you have any, early hypotheses about why, you might see such a difference between rich and poor countries, the sense that someone has a meaningful life?

So, this is speculation. This is going beyond the data. Again, we only have one wave to really work out causation. We need to collect multiple waves and look at changes, but some of what I would speculate is that, often it’s the communities, the relationships, which are giving rise, to personal formation, to a sense of belonging and connectedness, to, a sense of meaning.

And, you know, often in the West, we’ve not prioritized these, adequately. I think also as economic development, continues, we’re less dependent on, one another, and that can lead to a weakening. of bonds, I do think sometimes in pursuit of economic gain and growth, we sort of give up, aspects of solidarity. We might even sort of spend down our social capital, our solidarity to achieve higher levels of economic growth. I do think another major factor is, also in, many. Developed countries declining levels of religious participation as I indicated a little bit earlier, we’ve got strong evidence that participation in religious communities contributes to health.

Yes, but also happiness meaning relationships and as countries become more secular and sometimes give up those spiritual pathways to flourishing. I think that comes at a real And I think we’re seeing that, play out in the data as well.

Tom: When I was reading your, new book, Theology of Health, there was a phrase in there that really caught my mind. You said that what we value shapes our capacity to flourish. Can you say a little bit more about what you mean by that?

Tyler: Yeah. So, I think both at the individual level and at the societal level, if we’re strongly pursuing a particular goal, we’re more likely to attain that goal than other goals, which we may not be pursuing as, as strongly. And so, if we’re really focused on maximizing income or maximizing wealth, we’re more likely to attain that than other goals.

There’s no guarantee that we will, but more likely to attain that than if we were trying to construct, the most meaningful life for ourselves, either individually or for ourselves, as a society. we’ve seen this.

out empirically in the data, we have one study where we were looking at not just how well people were doing across different domains of wellbeing, like happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, but also how important they thought these things were.

And sure enough, those who valued, Relationships were more likely subsequently to have better relationships. Those who valued happiness were more likely to, attain happiness. Same with financial resources. But what was also interesting is kind of the, the crossover effects.

Those who felt financial resources were more important, were more likely to attain that, but that didn’t have all that much effect on those other aspects of wellbeing. Whereas those who really valued. Relationships, or trying to be a good person, character. had effects not just on those domains, but on the other domains as well.

Ended up being happier and, healthier, in addition to finding, meaning and, being able to help people. So, again, what we value really shapes our capacity to flourish and the ways in which we flourish.

Tom: Yeah. I want to talk about the term health. We apply health to a lot of things. Healthy body, healthy relationships, healthy outlook, healthy communities. tell me a little bit about what it means to be healthy.

Tyler: so, the, focus of the book is health as pertaining to, the human person, either there, body or. The health of the whole person, in their totality. But the scope of health, at least on a metaphorical basis, is broader. And I think we often refer to something as healthy.

When it’s whole, when the parts are intact and relating to each other properly in a way that the entity under consideration is also capable of fulfilling, it’s function. So that pertains to the body that pertains to the person, but it can also. Pertain to, a community or even a financial system, for example, but, you know, generally I think the notion of, health and then it’s full generality capture something of, wholeness.

Tom: Okay. Health is wholeness and well-functioning. let’s drill down a little bit. You mentioned. The health of the body and health of the person. What’s the difference between the two?

Tyler: Yeah. So, there’s a lot of debates in the conceptual and philosophical literature about the, the meaning of health, uh, World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

The argument put forward in the book is that we can sort of dissolve these arguments because we in fact have two notions of health.

The health of the body and the health of the person. The health of the body is the narrow sense of health. The body’s systems and parts are related to one another well and are functioning well to enable the human body to carry out the characteristic range of human activities. but we also have another notion of health, and that’s the health of the person, the person is whole, that all aspects of the person’s life are, good and, that’s a much, much broader notion that comes, much closer to, the World Health Organization’s definition of health.  and so, the book approaches this topic of, a theology of health, both with respect, to the body and, to the person.

Tom: Thinking more about that World Health Organization definition of health pertaining to physical, mental, and social, I feel like it’s intuitive to sense what physical health is, who are the professionals that care for it, mental health too, I’m imagining with psychiatry and counseling, but social health, I’m a little bit more unclear.

I’m wondering, how is social health understood, cultivated, and then who takes care of it when it’s not? goes off the rails and going badly.

Tyler: You know, I don’t think we have professionals generally taking care of social health, the same way we do physical and, mental and even spiritual health, I do think, you know, social health in some sense. is, the responsibility of us all as, a community, whether that community is, the local level of the family or the neighborhood or of a school or a church community or, broader at the level of a city or a state or a nation.

I think we each need to be working towards investment in community, investment in relationship, trying to build a sense of. solidarity with others. So, I don’t think it’s possible to attain social health without the participation of everyone now, having said that I do think there’s more that could be done at the societal Level,

I think for example we could start tracking measures of social health, of social connectedness, of loneliness in cities, and in countries, and in workplaces, and in schools, to better understand are things getting better or are things getting worse, and who needs help, and what we can do about it.

And it would be very odd to say today that physical health is just going to take care of itself, and we don’t need, Any sort of measurements of, weight or diet or of, blood pressure or screening tests for cancer. I mean, that would be viewed as crazy, but in some ways, that’s how we’ve been proceeding with social health.

We’ve not been measuring it, well, we’ve not been tracking it over time. We’ve not been trying to understand, what’s been going well and what’s, not over, time. So, I think we could start tracking this better at both local and.

and policy and, even public health and clinical level to promote social health.

Tom: Yeah.

Tyler: that.

Tom: we’ve talked about health being physical, mental, and social, but in your book, you talk about a fourth category of, of spiritual health. Can you tell me how is that maybe both a part of the first three or also maybe separate, spiritual health from the other forms of health?

Tyler: Yeah, I would argue that spiritual health, is distinct. While I do think there can be, certainly physical, mental and social components, I think what ultimately, distinguishes spiritual health from those other components is one’s own relation to, uh, the divine or the transcendent. and that can’t be reduced.

To simply those physical, mental and social domains. I mean, perhaps someone who does not believe there exists a divine or transcendent realm might, say, no, it all does fall into these three categories, but

For most of the world’s population that does identify. with one of these major world religions, I think the notion of, spiritual health or spiritual wellbeing is meaningful and, is not reducible, to the physical, mental, and social dimensions.

Tom: What do you think it would mean to be healthy from a spiritual perspective?

Tyler: Flourishing that we’ve used typically is, the relative attainment of a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good. that’s an ideal, it’s not something ever perfectly attained, in this life, it’s only ever attained relatively, but it’s sort of all encompassing, and so, the working definition I would use for spiritual well-being would be, living a state in which all aspects of a person’s spiritual life. our good, and then how that’s understood is going to vary by, by religious tradition, what sort of spiritual life consists of, or what aspects of this really are important are going to look very different in the Hindu versus the Christian versus a Buddhist, tradition, but I think as an umbrella definition, living in a state in which all aspects of a person’s spiritual life are good, I think that definition itself can be applied across the world religions.

Tom: Do you see health, whether it’s health of the body or health of the person, do you see it trending up or trending down at this point in our history of our society?

Tyler: Yeah, I mean, a lot of this depends on the timeframe, I would say, you know, about physical health, we’ve made extraordinary progress. progress over the last century life expectancy has been extended massively both in the United States, and globally. And I think these are things we should, unquestionably, celebrate.

I think also our capacity to deal with, mental illness has expanded, through cognitive behavioral therapy, through sometimes various pharmaceutical. treatments, these advances I think are, also good. I don’t think, looking at the human person in totality, the picture is all entirely clear and moving in, one direction.

I mean, there’s evidence that people trust one another today, much less so. than they did, in the past. As we discussed earlier, levels of community participation, have gone down. at least the most recent data over the last 10 years have suggested that loneliness has been, going up.

there are some trends, perhaps, especially about social health, that have suggested things aren’t looking, especially good. you know, likewise, at least within the last, 15-year suicide rates have, risen dramatically, in the United States.

So, I think these things are all, causes for, concern and might point to deeper, existential issues. In the last few years, we’ve also seen decreasing life expectancy even in the United States. So, while the hundred-year picture looks extraordinary, the recent years look pretty good, not quite as promising. So, I think there’s more that can be done to promote health of the person, both individually and as a society.

Tom: Well, mentioning existential questions, I’m going to talk a little bit about religion and health now. You’ve taught a course at Harvard called Religion, Wellbeing, and Public Health. what kind of benefits have you seen by studying these three topics together, which are usually divvied up and parceled across different departments?

Tyler: Yeah, so I think the evidence is clear now that, religious participation, is a powerful social determinant of health. our studies and those of many others, uh, using kind of best data and rigorous methods and controlling for a host of other factors, have indicated that, Weekly religious service attendance is associated with about a 30 percent decline in all-cause mortality, about a 30 percent decline, in, incidents of depression, fivefold reductions in, suicide, 30 to 50 percent reductions in the likelihood of divorce, over time, increased happiness, increased meaning, increased volunteering, big effects on, you know, important outcomes. And so, I, I think we need to take religion seriously as an important health resource. And if we neglect doing so, I think we are blind to the forces that shape us. public health,

And so, the course tries to. both bring the data and the most rigorous studies to the students that are participating, increase awareness of religion as a social, determinant of health, but then, explores the difficult terrain of what do we do about this work and what might be potential partnerships between, religious institutions and public health organizations.

How can we contribute, to common goals, across these different spheres of society?

Tom: Yeah. I’m imagining a critic saying, look, you’ve got this measure of weekly religious participation, and it’s associated with all these benefits. Well, what about weekly CrossFit participation? I’m getting social support, I’m getting exercise, I’m getting encouragement from my peers. Is there something about participating in a religious community that would go above and beyond? CrossFit or another tightly knit social group that does not have a necessarily a spiritual component.

Tyler: Yeah, I do think the evidence is that other forms of community life also contribute to health and well-being and in many ways. And I think we should take advantage of that as well. And once again, promote, social health across all spheres of society. but the research also indicates that the effect of, religious service attendance, religious community in particular, is larger.

Other forms of community life, yes, are important and valuable and contribute, but somehow the effects of religious community seem to be even larger. larger. That.

And the spiritual that’s giving religious communities their power, that shared set of values, purposes, systems of meaning, a history of the institution that extends beyond the life of the individual.

The coming together of those spiritual aspects with the social, with the community, with being with other people, seems to be especially powerful for health and well-being.

Tom: I’m convinced that humans need to feel loved and appreciated to flourish, and some of us get it from friends and family. Others really struggle for various circumstances. Now, I am wondering, if that’s the case,

What is a society to do? For those who feel unloved and unappreciated,

Yeah, I do think there’s more that can be done, and while it is, perhaps tricky and challenging, I do think we can and should be promoting love at, all levels. I mean, and I think this can be done even in, family relationships, parent child relationships, we have a new initiative at the Human Flourishing Program led by, Program Associate Christina Hinton on Parenting and Flourishing.

Tyler: And part of that is, helping parents to, better convey, Love to children our studies have indicated that’s a very powerful determinant of subsequent adult flourishing. So well for many this comes naturally others do struggle with it and I think can be helped to better express Love, likewise, I think we can do better job of trying to promote love more broadly love of neighbor for example a sense of connection with all of humanity, a recognition of their value and dignity that building of solidarity with one another, the pursuit of the common good.

I think we might even be able to promote better love of enemy. and this is, you know, more controversial, but you know, in a wonderful ceremony. Martin Luther King Jr. He argued that love of enemy can be really empowering. It frees the person who might be hated from that hatred of, the enemy.

It ends cycles of hatred in violence, and it sometimes has the capacity to, transform, the enemy. So, while difficult, I think focusing again on the humanity of all people, even of the enemy can, be a powerful way to restore broken relationships, to end enmities, and to promote love within society.

Tom: our society. Of course, there’s lots of room for improvement. There’s a lot of turmoil, a lot of hand wringing, a lot of stress and anxiety. I’m wondering what kind of reserves do you draw on and, what gives you, and what keeps you hopeful about the future?

Tyler: maybe I’ll speak first personally and then, talk about, the future and my hope for us as a society more generally, you know, for me, I would say chief resources are our first family. And friendship, but in addition to that, And, perhaps in an even deeper way, the Christian faith has been an extraordinary source of both the motivation and strength through difficult and challenging times.

So, my spiritual life has been quite critical in that regard. Now, regarding hope for society more broadly, we are facing several challenges, both at the national and global levels, whether that’s wars, political polarization, pandemics, environmental crises, or more difficult economic circumstances for young people. I do think our common humanity, if we come back to that and if we recognize it, will empower us.

Love to empower seeking the common good together. I think that does offer hope for our society. I think ultimately, we all want to flourish, as individuals. We all want all aspects of our life to be good. And to the extent that we can recognize that all people are in the same boat. This is what we’re all.

Seeking. And if we can emphasize that and our common ground that we can find, it holds potential for us to move forward and to address some of these challenges together. It won’t necessarily be easy, and we won’t always agree. but suppose we can focus on what we do agree on and where we can attain, consensus and on the promotion of things like happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, social wellbeing. In that case, I think that would go a long way in addressing many of the challenges we’re facing today.

Tom: Yeah, I was encouraged by this idea that expanding our conception of human health to the whole person opens the possibility that there’s more common ground than we might have associated with it, a narrow form of human health. So

Tyler, thank you for taking the time to talk to me today. And I’m looking forward to seeing how things develop.

Tyler: Wonderful. Thank you. Excellent to be with you, Tom. I appreciate it.