Being in the Present Moment: Toward an Epidemiology of Mindfulness

This paper is a commentary on Doug Oman’s article entitled, “Mindfulness for Global Public Health: Critical Analysis and Agenda,” published in this issue. The present paper lays out the parameters of how epidemiologists may go about investigating the population-health impact of practices and states of being related to mindfulness meditation. First, it discusses conceptual issues involved in researching mindfulness; second, it summarizes the empirical literature on mindfulness and population health; third, it proposes a new field of study around the epidemiology of mindfulness; and, fourth, it offers some suggestions regarding translation of epidemiologic research findings on mindfulness to public health. To this end, a series of questions is posed in order to provide a starting point for descriptive and analytic epidemiologic research on mindfulness, and the translation or application of such findings in pastoral, clinical, and public health settings is discussed, with examples given. Conducting epidemiologic studies is a natural next step in the emergence of mindfulness and meditation as a subject for health-related research. Moreover, public health can provide a new setting for mindfulness to demonstrate its salutary effects, not just on individual patients in clinical settings but at the population level, in terms of rates of physical and psychological morbidity.