2024 Human Flourishing ProgramYear in Review

Dear Friends,

It has been another exciting year at the Human Flourishing Program and we are happy to share with you some of the highlights of our Year in Review below. We’ve had a number of books on topics ranging from positive psychology, to religion, to love, to the nature of health itself. We’ve had numerous academic publications come out ranging from the results of our major forgiveness randomized trial to work on gratitude, hope, integrating the sciences and humanities, job satisfaction, end-of-life care, love of creation, the scope of education, and a flexible map of flourishing. We’ve received media attention from the New York Times, Washington Post, US News, and even Oprah Daily… along with that from our own home Institution, Harvard University.

We’ve also had Program-level developments including the moving on of our former Associate Director Dr. Flynn Cratty to a faculty position at UNC Chapel Hill and the welcoming of our new Executive Director, Glen Comiso, former chief-of-staff of MIT’s President, and have had a number of other important additions to our Human Flourishing Program team as well. We’ve further received new support from the Kern Family Foundation and from the Bancel Philanthropies to expand our work on impact.

The first of our aims at the Human Flourishing Program is stated as “to study and promote human flourishing.” While our academic contributions to the study of flourishing have been many, we have been increasingly trying to make use of the emerging insights to promote flourishing as well. Work this past year has included a framework for education for flourishing, commissioned by the OECD, a policy collaboration with the State of Tennessee on using flourishing assessments to evaluate social programs, an introduction of the notion of moral injury into the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), along with the launching of new initiatives on the promotion of forgiveness, positive parenting, promoting practical wisdom, and collaborations with schools, companies, and communities around the world. You are welcome to view our new impact page that summarizes some of these developments, and we look forward to more to come.

We are also very excited about the upcoming publications of our work on the Global Flourishing Study, a study of over 200,000 participants, in 22 countries, covering all six populated continents, and representing about half of the world’s population, with nationally representative data collection within each country, and planned five years of annual data collection. The first wave of data was released in February 2024, and data collection for the second wave is already now complete and will be released March of this year. In collaboration with Baylor University, we’ve had a large team of researchers analyzing and interpreting the data with over 100 papers underway. We’ll be publishing the first wave of this in a special collection with Nature-Springer on April 30th, along with a special launch event at Gallup headquarters in Washington DC. So stay tuned for the results (and see below for more information on this, and other events we’ve planned for 2025). The Global Flourishing Study is an open access data resource so we very much hope that others will make use of it as well, but it will certainly be an exciting year ahead for the Program, both with the publication of results, and as we move ahead to analyzing the second wave of data. We hope that these results will lead both to a deeper understanding of flourishing and help us to better promote global flourishing.

We couldn’t carry out all of this work without our very generous individual and foundation supporters (and we’ll be starting a new “corporate supporters” program too, so if you are interested, please get in touch). We do thus very much want to express our gratitude for the many people and institutions who have made this work possible, and if you would like to support the Human Flourishing Program directly, there is a link below and we would of course be happy to talk further. Thank you for your readership, and for your support, and for what you do to promote flourishing as well, and we wish you a flourishing 2025!

Tyler J. VanderWeele
John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Director, Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University

New Books

Koenig, H. K., VanderWeele, T. J., and Peteet, J. R. (2024). Handbook of Religion and Health. 3rd Edition. Oxford University Press.

Lomas, T., Hefferon, K., Ivtzan, I., & Gardiner, K. (2024). Applied Positive Psychology: Integrated Positive Practice (2nd Edition). London: Sage.

Teubner, J. (2024). Charity after Augustine: Solidarity, Conflict, and the Practices of Charity in the Latin West. Oxford University Press.

VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). A Theology of Health: Wholeness and Human Flourishing. University of Notre Dame Press.

Research Output

Human Flourishing Program researchers authored numerous journal articles across an array of disciplines. Here are some highlights:

• Bechara, A. O., Chen, Z. J., Cowden, R. G., Worthington, E. L., Toussaint, L., Rodriguez, N., Murillo, H. G., Ho, M. Y., Mathur, M. B., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Do forgiveness campaign activities improve forgiveness, mental health, and flourishing? International Journal of Public Health, 69:1605341.
• Case, B., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Integrating the humanities and social sciences: six approaches and case studies. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11, 231.
• Case, B. (2024). Love’s Limits in St. Paul and Seneca the Younger. Religions, 15(10), 1169.
• Case, B., & Lomas, T. (2024). Towards a historical comparison framework. International Journal of Wellbeing, 13(4), 3587.
• Cebral-Loureda, M., Lee, M. T., Hernández-Baqueiro, A., Lomas, T., & Tamés-Muñoz, E. (2024). Love as a concept in academic research: A bibliometric review. Methods in Psychology, 100153.
• Counted, V., Cowden, R. G., & Lomas, T. (2024). Global diversity in spatial (rural-urban) well-being in over 100 countries. Cities, 149, 104987.
• Counted, V., Cowden, R. G., & Lomas, T. (2024). Multidimensional flourishing in Africa: An intracontinental analysis of 38 well-being indicators in 40 countries. Journal of Happiness Studies, 25(5), 51.
• Cowden, R. G., Skinstad, D., Lomas, T., Johnson, B. R. & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Measuring wellbeing in the Global Flourishing Study: Insights from a cross-national analysis of cognitive interviews from 22 countries. Quality & Quantity.
• Chen, Y., Okereke, O.I., Kim, E.S., Tiemeier, H., Kubzansky, L.D., & VanderWeele, T.J. (2024). Gratitude and mortality among older US female nurses. JAMA Psychiatry, 81:1030–1038.
• Cowden, R. G., Pargament, K. I., & Wilkinson, R. (2024). Divine struggles and whole person functioning: A 9-year longitudinal study of middle-aged U.S. adults. Psychology & Health. Advance online publication.
• Cowden, R. G., Skinstad, D., Lomas, T., Johnson, B. R., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Measuring wellbeing in the Global Flourishing Study: Insights from a cross-national analysis of cognitive interviews from 22 countries. Quality & Quantity. Advance online publication.
• Cowden, R. G., Pargament, K. I., Chen, Z. J., & Bechara, A. O. (2024). Religious/spiritual struggles and whole person functioning among Colombian university students: Longitudinal evidence of mutual influence. International Journal of Psychology. Advance online publication.
• Cowden, R. G., Rutledge, J. C., Jackson-Meyer, K., & Cook, K. V. (2024). “Blessed is the One Whose Transgressions are Forgiven: Conceptual Foundations and a Template for Measuring Christian Experiences of Reconciliation with God” in The International Handbook of Emotions — Resourceful Cultural Perspectives, Vol. 1, edited by Claude-Hélène Mayer & Elisabeth Vanderheiden (New York, NY: Routledge, in press).
• Cowden, R. G. (2024). Four key areas of interpersonal forgiveness research that have developed over the last three decades: A reflection and tribute to Everett L. Worthington, Jr. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 11(2), 94–104.
• Duffee, C. (2025). Conceptual and historical blind spots of large language models in research on pain-related suffering. Pain, 166(1), 222.
• Espinosa Dice, A. L., Lawn, R. B., Ratanatharathorn, A., Roberts, A. L., Denckla, C. A., Kim, A. H., de la Rosa, P. A., Zhu, Y., VanderWeele, T. J., & Koenen, K. C. (2024). Childhood maltreatment and health in the UK Biobank: Triangulation of outcome-wide and polygenic risk score analyses. BMC Medicine, 22: 135.
• Felton, C. & Stewart, B. (2024). “Handle with Care: A Sociologist’s Guide to Causal Inference with Instrumental Variables” in Sociological Methods & Research.
• Florez-Jimenez, M. P., Lleo, A., Ruiz-Palomino, P., & Muñoz-Villamizar, A. F. (2024). Corporate sustainability, organizational resilience, and corporate purpose: a review of the academic traditions connecting them. Review of Managerial Science, 1–38.
• Florez-Jimenez, M. P., Lleo, A., Danvila-del-Valle, I., & Sánchez-Marín, G. (2024). Corporate sustainability, organizational resilience and corporate purpose: a triple concept for achieving long-term prosperity. Management Decision.
• Florez-Jimenez, M. P., Lleo, A., Ruiz-Palomino, P., & Rey, C. (2024). How to Make Organizations Highly Resilient. The Role of Purpose-Driven Leadership and Shared Purpose. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2024, №1, p. 14975). Valhalla, NY 10595: Academy of Management.
• Friedrich, C., & Lomas, T. (2024). Embodied superpower: A qualitative study of the experience of highly sensitive wellbeing practitioners. International Journal of Wellbeing, 14(3), 3455, 1–26.
• Fung, E. N., Cowden, R. G., Chen, Y., Weziak-Bialowolska, D., Bialowolski, P., Lee, M. T., McNeely, E., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Prospective associations of multidimensional well-being with work distraction and job satisfaction: a two-wave study of US employees. Frontiers in Psychology, section Organizational Psychology, 15, 1326655.
• Gribble AK, Hershey MS, López-Gil JF, Lan F-Y, Kales SN, Martínez-González MÁ, Bes-Rastrollo M, & Fernandez-Montero A. Intensity of habitual physical activity and maintenance of normal blood pressure — findings from the SUN longitudinal cohort study. MedRxiv, 2024; 2024.04.29.24306595.
• Hanson, J. (2024). Thomas Aquinas and the Qualification of Monastic Labor. Religions, 15(3), 366.
• Ho, M. Y., Worthington, E., Cowden, R. G., 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. & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). International REACH Forgiveness Intervention: A multi-site randomised controlled trial. BMJ Public Health, 2:e000072.
• Jeffery-Schwikkarda, D., Li, J., Nagpalc, P., & Lomas, T. (2024). Systematic review of character development in low- and middle-income countries. Journal of Positive Psychology.
• Kim, E.S., Wilkinson, R., Okuzono, S.S., Chen, Y., Shiba, K., Cowden, R. G., & VanderWeele, T. J.(2024). Positive affect during adolescence and health and well-being in adulthood: An outcome-wide longitudinal approach. PLOS Medicine, 21:e1004365.
• Kim, E. S., Chen, Y., Hong, J. H., Lachman, M. E., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2025). Mastering the canvas of life: Identifying the antecedents of sense of control using a lagged exposure‐wide approach. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 17(1), e12618.
• Kristjánsson, K., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). The proper scope of education for flourishing. Journal of Philosophy of Education, qhae056.
• Kurniati, N. M. T., Cowden, R. G., Zulkaida, A., Gunatirin, E. Y., Rahardjo, W., Elizabeth, M. P., Mathur, M. B., Ho, M. Y., VanderWeele, T. J., & Worthington, E. L. (2024). A randomized control trial of a brief self-directed secular REACH forgiveness intervention with Indonesian Christians: does religiousness matter? Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 11:297–314.
• Lee, M. T. (2024). The Social and Moral Ecology of Education for Flourishing. Journal of Moral Education, 3(4), 645–661.
• Lee, M. T., & Wellinghoff, B. (2024). Love and Flourishing in a Business Organization: The Practical Wisdom of Barry-Wehmiller, Inc.. Humanist Manag J, 9, 167–182.
• Lin P. J., Hershey M. S., Lee T. L., Shih C.-W., Tausi S., Sosene V., Maani P. P., Tupulaga M., Hsu Y. T., Chang C. R., Wu S. M., López-Gil J. F., Tang L., Shiau S. C., Lo Y. H., & Wei C. F. Temporal trends of food consumption patterns in Tuvalu under the context of climate change: COMmunity-based Behavior and Attitude survey in Tuvalu (COMBAT) since 2020. Nutrition. 2024; 112488.
• Lomas, T., Case, B., Lee, M. T., Bear, L., Cowden, R. G., Greenberg, Y. K., Rashid, T., and VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Love of creation: Exploring diversity and commonality among religious and philosophical traditions. Zygon, 59:352–381
• Lomas, T., Case, B., Cratty, F., & Batson, A. (2024). The dance of East and West: A brief history of an unstable but enduring conceptual partnership. East West Studies, 13, 6–25.
• Lomas, T., Diego-Rosell, P., Shiba, K., Standridge, P., Lee, M. T., & Lai, A. Y. (2024). The world prefers a calm life, but not everyone gets to have one: Global trends in valuing and experiencing calmness in the Gallup World Poll. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 19(6), 1023–1036.
• Lomas, T., Padgett, R. N., Lai, A. Y., Pawelski, J. O., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). A multidimensional assessment of global flourishing: Differential rankings of 145 Countries on 38 wellbeing indicators in the Gallup World Poll, with an accompanying factor analysis of the structure of flourishing. The Journal of Positive Psychology.
• Lomas, T., Pawelski, J., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). A flexible map of flourishing: The dynamics and drivers of flourishing, wellbeing, health, and happiness. International Journal of Wellbeing, 13(4), 1–38.
• Lomas, T., Pawelski, J. O., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Flourishing as ‘sustainable well-being’: balance and harmony within and across people, ecosystems, and time. The Journal of Positive Psychology.
• Long, K.N.G., Symons, X., VanderWeele, T. J., Balboni, T. A., Balboni, M., Rosmarin, D. H., Tauch, L., Puchalski, C., Gunderson, G., Idler, E., Oman, D., Cutts, T., & Koh, H.K. (2024). Addressing spirituality as a determinant of health: emerging policies, practices, and systems. Health Affairs, 43:783–790.
• Long, K. N. G., Wilkinson, R., Cowden, R. G., Chen, Y., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Hope in adolescence and subsequent health and well-being in adulthood: an outcome-wide longitudinal study. Social Science & Medicine, 347:116704.
• López-Gil J. F., Tárraga-López P. J., Hershey M. S., López-Bueno R., Gutiérrez-Espinoza H., Soler-Marín A., Fernández-Montero A., & Victoria-Montesinos D. (2024). Orthorexia nervosa: Why research based on imperfect measures may still be useful. Journal of Global Health, 14, 03053.
• López-Gil J. F., Wu S. M., Lee T. L., Shih C. W., Tausi S., Sosene V., Maani P. P., Tupulaga M., Hsu Y. T., Chang C. R., Shiau S. C., Lo Y. H., Wei C. F., Lin P. J., & Hershey M. S.. Higher imported food patterns are associated with obesity and severe obesity in Tuvalu: A latent class analysis. CDN. 2024; 102080.
• Nakamura, J. S., Lee, M. T., VanderWeele, T. J., & Kim, E. S. (2024). Informal helping and subsequent health and well-being in older U.S. adults. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 31:503–515.
• Nilsson, A. H., Eichstaedt, J. C., Lomas, T., Schwartz, A., & Kjell, O. (2024). The Cantril Ladder elicits thoughts about power and wealth. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 2642.
• Padgett, R. N., Lee, M. T., Wilkinson, R., Tsavaris, H., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Reliability and Validity of a Multidimensional Measure of Subjective Community Well-Being. Assessment, 31(8), 1658–1673.
• Perez-Araluce, R., Bes-Rastrollo, M., Gea, A., Angel Martínez-González, M., VanderWeele, T. J, & Chen, Y. (2024). Binge drinking and subsequent health and well-being among middle-aged Spanish adults: An outcome-wide analysis. Preventive Medicine, 108209.
• Psimopoulos, C. (2024) “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: Bioethical Considerations and Limitations based on For the Life of the World: Toward A Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church Online. Public Orthodoxy / Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies. October 2024. Paper accepted for publication and published online.
• Psimopoulos, C. (Forthcoming) Greek translation of Therese Lysaught’s edited book on Paul Farmer’s praxis and theological ethics, entitled: “A Prophet to the Peoples: Paul Farmer’s Witness and Theological Ethics.” Greek title is: “(Ένας) Προφήτης για την Ανθρωπότητα Η Μαρτυρία του Πωλ Φάρμερ και η Θεολογική Ηθική.”
• Qureshi, F., Kubzansky, L. D., Chen, Y., Soo, J., Kim, E. S., Lloyd-Jones, D., & Boehm, J. K. (2024). Associations between positive affect and physical activity from young adulthood to midlife: A 25-year prospective study. Health Psychology, 43(10), 730–738.
• Santiago, S., Ochoa Díaz, M. E., Zazpe, I., Hershey, M. S., Bes-Rastrollo, M., & Martínez González, M. Á. (2024). Association between overall quality of macronutrients and incidence of overweight and obesity in the SUN (Seguimiento Universidad de Navarra) cohort. Nutrición Hospitalaria.
• Skiba, R., McNeely, E., & Weziak-Bialowolska, D. (2025). Limited Social Contact at Work During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Shift Worker’s Health and Well-being. In: Suter, C., Chesters, J., Fachelli, S. (eds) Well-being During the Pandemic. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 90. Springer, Cham.
• Symons, X., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Aristotelian flourishing and contemporary philosophical theories of wellbeing. Journal of Happiness Studies, 25, Article 26.
• Symons, X., Rhee, J. Y., Tanous, A., Balboni, T., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Flourishing at the end of life. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, 45:401–425.
• Talavera-Rodríguez I., Banegas J. R., de la Cruz J. J., Martínez-Gómez D., Ruiz-Canela M., Ortolá R., Hershey M. S., Artalejo F. R., & Sotos-Prieto M. Mediterranean lifestyle index and 24-h systolic blood pressure and heart rate in community-dwelling older adults. GeroScience, 2024;46(1), 1357–1369.
• Teubner, J. (2024). “Seeking a new St. Benedict: Moral formation in late antiquity,” in James Mumford and Ryan Olson, eds. Moral Ecologies of Trust.
• Toprani S. M., Scheibler C., Mordukhovich I., McNeely E., & Nagel Z. D. (2024). Cosmic Ionizing Radiation: A DNA Damaging Agent That May Underly Excess Cancer in Flight Crews. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 25(14):7670.
• VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Flourishing and the scope of medicine and public health. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 78:466–470.
• VanderWeele, T. J., & Hinton, C. (2024). Metrics for education for flourishing: a framework. International Journal of Wellbeing, 14, Article 3197:1–35.
• de Vries, W., Rutledge, J. C., Jackson-Meyer, K., Schaap-Jonker, H., Sierksma, A., & Cowden, R. G., “Forgiveness Reconsidered: Agency and the Contextual Nature of Forgiveness in the Aftermath of Clergy Sex Abuse,” In International Handbook of Emotions. Positive and Cultural Psychology Perspectives, edited by Claude-Helene Mayer and Elizabeth Vanderheiden, OSF Preprints, 2024.
• Weziak-Bialowolska, D., Cowden, R. G., Bialowolski, P., Bechara, A. O., Chen, Z. J., Cook, K. V., Kurniati, N. M. T., Suwartono, C., Widyarini, N., McNeely, E., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Associations of orientation to promote good in challenging situations with distress and well-being: multi-study evidence from three on-western longitudinal samples. European Journal of Social Psychology, 54:449–464.
• Wilkinson R., Byrne T., Cowden R. G., Long K. N. G., Kuhn J. H., Koh H. K., & Tsai J. First Decade of Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program and Homelessness, 2012–2022. American Journal of Public Health. 2024; 114(6); 610–618.
• Wilson, M., & VanderWeele, T. J. (2024). Rational optimism. Philosophia, 52:757–778.
• Wilson Fadiji, A., & Lomas, T. (2024). Understanding the Association between education and wellbeing: An exploration of the Gallup World Poll. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 1–35.

Impact

Projects Oriented Towards Impact at the Human Flourishing Program

• The Flourishing Network
• Promoting Flourishing in Schools
• Social Program Evaluation with the State of Tennessee
• Academic Flourishing and the Flourishing Data Collaborative
• Solidarity, Economics, and Flourishing Initiative
• SHINE (Sustainability and Health Initiative for Net-positive Enterprise)
• Promotion of Forgiveness Project
• United Nations World Day for Children’s Dignity
• Facing Moral Injury
• Parenting and Flourishing
• Practical Wisdom Project

Other Academic Projects Oriented Towards Impact

• Council on Academic Freedom
• Suffering and Flourishing
• Homelessness and Health
• The Global Wellbeing Initiative
• A Positive Cross-Cultural Lexicography

Visit our Impact Page.

Media Coverage

Our research was featured in numerous in national and international media, newspapers, and magazines including The New York Times, Vox, and US News.

How Are You Really?

Why February Is the Best Month for Resolutions

What Does a Human Need to Truly Flourish?

Who gets to flourish?

Character Counts in College Rankings

Authenticity can protect mental health. Here’s how to be authentic.

Other Media Coverage

Gratitude

Gratitude May Bring Longer Life

Gratitude can help you live longer, study finds

Spirituality:

Spirituality can boost health and well-being: Researchers

Health care needs more spirituality, experts say

Dear Biohackers, We’re Aging Beautifully, Thank You

Harvard Impact

• Undergraduate fellows journeyed to England for the fourth Oxford Vivarium, an intensive week-long seminar led by Flynn Cratty.
• Flourishing Fellows reading groups on “Flourishing and Humor” (Rutledge), “Virtue Ethics: Historical and Contemporary Views” (Jackson- Meyer), “AI and Flourishing” (Tuebner), and “Conflict, Resolution, and Flourishing” (Jackson-Meyer).
• Spring 2024 Flourishing Intensive w/Campus BioMedico di Roma led by Jonathan Rutledge & Xavier Symons
• Kate Jackson-Meyer was a Capstone mentor in spring and fall of 2024 in the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics MS Program
• Kate Jackson-Meyer, directed an Intensive Guided Study: Bioethics, Spirituality, and Public Health: Global Perspectives (Spring 2024, Online Synchronous) at Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics.

We received Harvard Gazette and Harvard Media Coverage on:

Longevity:

The importance of connections: Ways to live a longer, healthier life

Gratitude

There’s much to be grateful for in giving thanks

Forgiveness:

‘Harvard Thinking’: Forgiving what you can’t forget

Spirituality:

More spirituality in health system could boost health, well-being

Why public health should attend to the spiritual side of life

Public health’s spirituality disconnect (Also featured in Harvard Public Health’s Top stories of 2024)

Hope

Hope: A research-based explainer

Popular Publications

The Global Flourishing Study [Mar]

The Importance of Forgiveness Campaigns [May]

Gratitude Shown to Extend Longevity [Aug]

Assessing Academic Flourishing [Oct]

A Theology of Health and Human Flourishing [Oct]

Hope and Rational Optimism [Nov]

Better Together: Integrating the Sciences and Humanities [Dec]

Brendan Case & Tyler VanderWeele, Common Good:

To Live at the End of Life

Why Giving Is Better than Receiving

Why You Can Actually Be Hopeful on Election Day

Meaning Is Only as Good as the Virtue That Inspires It

The Three Dimensions of True Health

New Evidence for the Effect of Gratitude on Life Expectancy

The Power of Hope amid an Epidemic of Despair

Flourishing at Work

The Necessity of Forgiveness in Public Health and Politics

Why Marriage Matters

What To Do about the Loneliness Epidemic

What Does Human Character Have to Do with Human Flourishing?

Here’s an Unchurchy Case for Church

Case, B., “Choose Less and Be Blessed,” Common Good

Hershey, M. S., Reen, A., Duro Sánchez-Cid, M., & Bohlin, K.E. (2024). Practical Wisdom for Agile Leadership Formative Education’s Core DNA [2023–2024 Report of Findings]. Abigail Adams Institute.

Jackson-Meyer, K. “Wealth, Misery, Happiness, and Flourishing Inequality: A Response to Kate Ward’s Wealth, Virtue, and Moral Luck: Christian Ethics in an Age of Inequality,” Book Symposium, Syndicate.

Long, K. N., Counted, V., Fogleman, A., Lee, M. T., Johnson, B. R., VanderWeele, T. J.. Flourishing & the Church: Studying and Promoting the Flourishing of the Church in the 21st Century and Beyond. A Special Report of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University, the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University, and the Abundant Life Flourishing Program at Regent University.

Long, K. N., Lessons In Human Flourishing: What Science Is Teaching Us, Wisdom 2.0.

Long, K. N., Hope, Forgiveness, and Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program, Healing Theology.

Long, K. N., Reimagining Public Health, Health Affairs Launch Event. June 5, 2024.

Teubner, J. (2024). “The Mystery of Data,” Reflections (a publication of Yale Divinity School) (May).

Rutledge, J., Exploring “God of Holy Love” with Dr. Jonathan Rutledge, Christian Philosophy Academy

Past Events in 2024

We hosted several events and conferences in 2024. Here are just a few:

World Congress on Moral Injury, March 17–19

Flourishing at Work, May 2024 (co-hosted at Harvard with LX Collaborative & Sovereign’s Capital)

Solidarity, Economics, and Flourishing Initiative Workshop, October 2024 (co-hosted at Oxford University)

HumanConnection.AI, San Francisco, CA, October 8–9, 2024

Experiencing Divine Forgiveness: Empirical Insights and Practical Implications, webinar, November 12, 2024

Humanity in the Digital Age, Rome, Italy, December 16–17, 2024

Sages and Scientists, September 14–15, 2024 (co-hosted at Harvard’s Memorial Hall with the Deepak Chopra Foundation)

Upcoming Events in 2025

• New Horizons in Veterans Wellbeing & Resilience Summit, Harvard Sanders Theatre, March 17, 8am — 11pm
• How to Heal Communities with Love, cohosted with Champions of Love, Memorial Church, Harvard, Friday, April 25, 4:00–6:00 pm, open to the public.
• Global Flourishing Study Launch Event, Washington D.C., April 30, online event open to the public.
• Church Flourishing Conference, Boston, April 30
• Flourishing @ Work Summit, Harvard, May 1–2

• Makarios: Love of Neighbor and Human Flourishing, Rome, Italy, May 31- June 2

Contribute

We rely on the generous support of donors to enable us to study and promote wellbeing reaching out to Harvard and communities around the world. You can give online or find instructions for additional giving options here. All donations to the program are tax deductible and Harvard Alumni will receive class credit for any gifts made. If you have questions, please feel free to contact the executive director, Glen Comiso at gcomiso@fas.harvard.edu.

Our Mission

The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science aims to study and promote human flourishing, and to develop systematic approaches to the synthesis of knowledge across disciplines.

You can sign up here for a monthly research e-mail from the Human Flourishing Program, or click here to follow us on Twitter. For past postings please see our Psychology Today Human Flourishing Blog.