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Our Impact
Advancing the Promotion of Human Flourishing
The Human Flourishing Program is committed not only to studying what it means to live well, but also to translating that knowledge into efforts that strengthen people, communities, and institutions. Through research, measurement, and applied collaboration, our impact initiatives advance the promotion of flourishing in practice as well as in theory.
Core Initiatives
Academic Flourishing Initiative
The Academic Flourishing Initiative develops and applies new ways to assess how university life contributes to students’ intellectual, moral, and personal formation. In 2024, the Human Flourishing Program introduced a 24-item measure of academic flourishing focused on areas such as wisdom, character, service, and clear thinking. A subset of the measure was included in the Wall Street Journal’s Survey of U.S. Colleges and Universities, and the full measure is now being used in a campus-wide pilot study. Building on this work, the Program will launch the Flourishing Data Collaborative in fall 2025 to help colleges and universities share research, tools, and best practices for advancing academic flourishing.
Flourishing Schools Project
Our K-12 education work is helping shape policy and practice at both global and school levels. In collaboration with the OECD, we have helped advance a broader vision of education oriented toward holistic flourishing, including major framework and evidence reviews on education for flourishing and student well-being. This work is also informing collaborations with UNESCO and with schools around the world through character interventions, flourishing assessments, and large-scale research partnerships. Together, these efforts are helping connect flourishing research with practical change in classrooms, schools, and education systems globally.
Global Forgiveness Movement
We seek to promote forgiveness around the world through evidence-based interventions and public engagement. Grounded in research, this work draws on the REACH Forgiveness model and the largest randomized controlled trial on interpersonal forgiveness to date, conducted across five high-conflict countries. The findings indicate that these interventions can increase forgiveness while also reducing depression and anxiety and promoting hope and flourishing. With freely available workbook materials now translated into languages reaching much of the world’s population, the initiative aims to make forgiveness resources widely accessible in the years ahead.
Flourishing Network
The Flourishing Network connects a global community of professionals working to study and promote flourishing across fields such as medicine, education, and business. With more than 500 members, the network supports ongoing exchange through monthly discussions, public events, interest groups, communities of practice, and the Flourish FM podcast. It has also fostered meaningful collaboration across disciplines, including joint publications and the co-edited volume Leadership for Flourishing. Through these activities, the network helps strengthen both the study and practice of human flourishing around the world.
All Initiatives
Student Engagement
The Flourishing Fellows program engages students through reading groups and intensive seminars that explore core questions about meaning, character, work, and the human person. These program emphasizes close engagement with foundational texts, interdisciplinary thinking, and discussion-based learning, bringing together students from Harvard and beyond to reflect seriously on what it means to live a flourishing life. Join our newsletter to find upcoming student opportunities.
AI and Flourishing Initiative
The AI and Flourishing Initiative examines how artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are shaping personal and communal flourishing, and how technological progress can be directed toward human ends. By convening social scientists, philosophers, theologians, policy leaders, and technology builders, the initiative is helping develop frameworks for evaluating and guiding AI in ways that serve individuals and communities. Its work includes high-level symposia, cross-sector dialogue, and the HumanConnection.AI project, all aimed at re-embedding technology within a richer understanding of human society, relationships, and purpose.
Evidence-Based Parenting Initiative
The Evidence-Based Parenting for Flourishing Families initiative shares key principles from research to dispel popular parenting myths and offer evidence-based strategies for parenting. The initiative is launching a social media campaign to disseminate evidence-based knowledge to the general public. The initiative hosts an evidence-based parenting program to support patience, serenity, joy, loving relationships, and flourishing with 3,000 parents across the English and Spanish-speaking world.
Love of Neighbor Initiative
Grounded in the conviction that love is central to human flourishing, the Love of Neighbor Initiative aims to: (i) promote love in all different types of relationships – from parenting to schools to friendship to religious communities and beyond; (ii) begin nationally representative tracking of love of neighbor and love of enemy assessments to see how these are distributed throughout society and how they may be changing over time; (iii) encourage the promotion of love within policy, and the recognition of love as a social determinant of health; and (iv) support campaigns promoting a universal love of neighbor. More more information on our work and initiative, please see our Love and Flourishing Project brochure.
Moral Injury Initiative
Our work on moral injury seeks to improve understanding, care, and recovery for those facing profound ethical, psychological, social, or spiritual distress in the line of duty. In 2022, an international group of experts was convened to develop a consensus definition of moral injury, later recognized by the American Psychiatric Association. This work also contributed to the inclusion of “Moral” in the DSM-5-TR Z-code for “Moral, Religious or Spiritual Problem,” helping clinicians address moral distress and injury more directly in practice. Together, these efforts are strengthening recognition of moral injury and supporting more comprehensive care for those in high-risk professions.
United Nations World Day for Children’s Dignity
This initiative helped establish a United Nations World Day dedicated to the prevention of child sexual abuse, exploitation, and violence, and to the healing of survivors. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2022 and sponsored by 120 countries, the resolution calls for stronger protections for children, greater public awareness, and increased attention to the needs of those affected. It also reflects broader efforts to address the deep harms these crimes cause, including lasting threats to dignity and mental health. A conference on healing and prevention held the previous year helped serve as an important catalyst for this global recognition.
Solidarity, Economics, and Flourishing Initiative
The Solidarity, Economics, and Flourishing Initiative brings together collaborators across research, policy, and business to develop a more integrated approach to human flourishing. Launched in 2024, the initiative is building a conceptual and empirical framework that links flourishing with broader social, economic, and environmental conditions, while also developing practical guidance for policy and business decision-making. Drawing on large-scale data and cross-sector collaboration, it aims to help reorient economic and institutional life toward flourishing without neglecting solidarity, meaning, or social connection. Through engagement with policy-makers and business leaders, the initiative seeks to place flourishing more fully at the center of public and economic life.
Social Program Evaluation with the State of Tennessee
This collaboration with the State of Tennessee is helping reorient social-welfare policy toward human flourishing by focusing on how programs affect people’s lives, not only how funds are distributed. As part of this work, flourishing is being assessed as an outcome in seven ongoing randomized controlled trials of welfare programs through the use of the twelve-item Flourishing Index. The effort also aims to develop a broader framework for evaluating flourishing, community well-being, and social flourishing in social policy. More broadly, it offers a model for how outcome measurement in public policy can be reshaped around human well-being.
Practical Wisdom Project
The Practical Wisdom Project is helping leaders in schools, universities, and mission-driven organizations cultivate the judgment needed to make wise, mission-aligned decisions. Since 2021, it has reached more than 7,500 leaders across 500 institutions worldwide through programs designed to strengthen leadership, shared decision-making, and institutional flourishing. Its flagship executive education program, Practical Wisdom for Agile Leadership, equips participants with tools, reflective practice, and a community of practice for navigating complex challenges with wisdom. Reports of findings point to measurable growth in leaders’ ability to reason wisely, find meaning and purpose in their work, and foster flourishing within their organizations.
Initiative on Health, Spirituality, Religion
The Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion brings together faculty across Harvard to advance interdisciplinary research on the role of religion and spirituality in medicine and public health. Grounded in rigorous scientific and scholarly inquiry, it explores how spiritual and religious resources relate to health, care, and human flourishing at both individual and social levels. By fostering collaboration across fields, the initiative seeks to generate new knowledge that can inform healthcare practice and contribute to the alleviation of illness and the promotion of well-being.
Flourishing and the Church Initiative
The Flourishing and the Church Initiative seeks to help church communities better understand and promote flourishing through data, research, and context-sensitive measurement. Focused especially on Christian communities, it explores how flourishing relates to faith, practice, service, and congregational life at the individual, church, and community levels. Through collaborations with academic partners, congregations, and researchers in the United States and Europe, the initiative is building a stronger foundation for churches to assess and nurture flourishing within their own settings.
Sustainability and Health Initiative for Net-positive Enterprise
The SHINE Initiative examines how work shapes flourishing and how workplaces can be designed to better support well-being and resilience. By partnering with organizations as real-world research settings, it studies the effects of work systems, business practices, and new forms of work design across industries. Drawing on multidisciplinary methods and data, the initiative helps build a broader understanding of how leaders and policymakers can improve quality of life and support the long-term well-being of employees, communities, and other stakeholders.
Council on Academic Freedom
The Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard is a faculty-led initiative devoted to advancing academic freedom, civil discourse, and viewpoint diversity across the university. Since its formal establishment in 2023, it has grown into a university-wide community that sponsors events, convenes discussions, issues statements, and engages faculty leadership on matters of academic freedom. Its work has helped shape significant policy changes at Harvard, including the Institutional Voice Policy adopted in 2024, and has also inspired similar faculty councils at other universities.