Concentrating on Mindfulness

The world’s first MPH graduates with a concentration in mindfulness completed their degrees at Brown in 2023. Instructed by interdisciplinary faculty from the Mindfulness Center at Brown, the concentration focuses on the impacts of mindfulness on physical and mental health, analysis of mindfulness-based interventions and applicable theoretical frameworks.

Director of the Mindfulness Center, Eric Loucks, associate professor of epidemiology, medicine and of behavioral and social sciences, says the concentration combines the MPH’s traditional broad public health training with newer approaches to research, treatment modalities and teaching. 

“These graduates have a remarkable confluence of skills in mindfulness and public health,” he said. “They do a deep delve into the science and practice of mindfulness, and then apply the skills of biostatistics, epidemiology, health services and other public health domains to mindfulness science.”

In addition to the concentration, the Mindfulness Center also offers online instruction, continuing education, and courses for undergraduate and graduate-level students including “Meditation, Mindfulness and Health,” “Mindfulness Epidemiology,” “The Craving Mind,” and “Measuring Mindfulness.”

The new mindfulness concentration is an outgrowth of the Mindfulness Center’s six years of expansion which includes collaborations with over 30 researchers and educators and a growing international reputation for advancing training, methodology and theory in the field.