About RPHC
Our New Director - Dr. Ellen Idler
In September 2009, Dr. Ellen L. Idler will begin her role as Director, Religion and Public Health Collaborative (RPHC) and Professor, Department of Sociology (Emory College) and Epidemiology (Rollins School of Public Health). Dr. Idler comes to Emory from Rutgers University, where she has taught in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research since 1985. She studies the influence of attitudes, beliefs, and social connections on health, including the effect of self-ratings of health on mortality and disability, and the impact of religious participation on health and the timing of death among the elderly, research supported by National Institute on Aging funding, including a FIRST Award.
Dr. Idler's admiration for the RPHC's work in religion and health at Emory University stems from its focus on health at the population level, rather than the individual level, and its emphasis on prevention. One of Dr. Idler's visions for the RPHC is to make interdisciplinary religion and health opportunities available to undergraduate students. Additionally, she hopes to expand the research focus of the RPHC from Maternal and Child Health and Reproductive Health to cover the entire life course. This aligns with her work on aging and also with the University's move to work more closely with Wesley Woods, the geriatric care component of Emory Healthcare. She is very eager to become a part of this community and contribute to this important work.
A native of Pennsylvania, Dr. Idler completed her B.A at the College of Wooster in 1974. Following graduation, she received a Rockefeller Brothers Fellowship to study for a year at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Her graduate work at Yale University was concentrated in both public health and sociology, and she received both her Ph.D. and M.Phil. in 1985. This unique blending of sociology, religion, and public health results in a breadth of knowledge that will benefit the work of the RPHC in the years to come.
Dr. Idler has received world-wide recognition for her research and publications, which include over 50 articles and multiple books reviews over the course of her career. In 1998, she was awarded the John Templeton Foundation Exemplary Papers Prize for an Outstanding Paper in Religion and Behavioral Sciences for her 1997 article, "Religion among Disabled and Nondisabled Elderly Persons." Another 1997 article, entitled "Self-Rated Health and Mortality," was recognized by the Institute for Scientific Information as the 3rd most frequently cited paper in the General Social Sciences for the decade of 1996-2005. Her work has also been translated into multiple languages for world-wide publication. Her frequently cited research on the psychosocial factors that affect health status has been supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging, the Fetzer Institute, and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Dr. Idler has served on the editorial boards of nine journals throughout her career, most currently with theJournal of Aging and Health,Sociological Forum, andKakovostna Starost, the Slovenian Journal of Gerontology.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Idler, her husband Philip Ayers, and their two children, Emma and Alexander, to the Emory community!