Honorary degree for George Eastman Visiting Professor

Wednesday 20 May 2020

Tyler VanderWeele (George Eastman Visiting Professor) has been awarded an honorary degree by the Catholic University of America in recognition of his ‘ongoing efforts to serve vulnerable populations and develop a fuller understanding of the factors that contribute to human flourishing’.

Professor VanderWeele is the John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Director of the Human Flourishing Program and Co-Director of the Initiative on Health, Religion and Spirituality at Harvard University.

His research concerns methodology for distinguishing between association and causation in observational studies, and the use of statistical and counterfactual ideas to formalise and advance epidemiologic theory and methods. His empirical research spans psychiatric, perinatal, and social epidemiology; the science of happiness and flourishing; and the study of religion and health, including both religion and population health and the role of religion and spirituality in end-of-life care. He has published over three hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals, and is author of Explanation in Causal Inference (Oxford University Press, 2015).

He has recently written on the Covid-19 crisis: for example, ‘Flourishing Amidst Coronavirus’ in Psychology Today and as co-author of ‘Accurate Statistics on COVID-19 Are Essential for Policy Guidance and Decisions’ in the American Journal of Public Health.