Director
Director - Ellen Idler, PhD
In September 2009, Dr. Ellen L. Idler became Director of the Religion and Public Health Collaborative (RPHC) and Professor, Department of Sociology (Emory College) and Epidemiology (Rollins School of Public Health). Dr. Idler came to Emory from Rutgers University, where she taught in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research for 25 years. Her current research concentrates on the influence of attitudes, beliefs, and social determinants 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 funding from the National Institute on Aging, including a FIRST Award.
Dr. Idler's vision for the RPHC is multi-dimensional. Her goal is to make interdisciplinary religion and health opportunities available to undergraduate students, as well as graduate students. Additionally, she has begun to expand the research focus of the RPHC from Maternal and Child Health and Reproductive Health to cover the entire life course. The conference "Beliefs and Barriers: Religion and Decision-Making at the End of Life", co-sponsored by the Center for Ethics, addressed research on various healthcare and religious issues present at the end of life. Dr. Idler's work on aging and her growing alignment with Wesley Woods, the geriatric care component of Emory Healthcare, has made her a valuable contributor 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.