Spotlight on Integrative Health and Spirituality SIG’s 2024 Distinguished Scientist Award Recipient: Dr. Kevin Masters

Katherine E. Gnall, MS; Sarah E. Ahmadi, BS; Integrative Health and Spirituality SIG

Dr. Masters is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado Denver, where he is the Director of the Cardiovascular and Life Meaning (CaLM) lab. In recognition of his impressive work in the field of spirituality and health, Dr. Masters was awarded one of the 2024 Integrative Health and Spirituality (IHS) SIG’s Distinguished Scientist Award. The IHS SIG interviewed Dr. Masters to learn more about his work and current research projects:

IHS: To someone less familiar with this field of research, how would you describe religion versus spirituality?

Dr. Masters: Religion tends to have a certain structure to it – sacred texts, a clerical structure, certain practices, often done in a group setting. Spirituality tends to emphasize a more individual experience, less governed by any sacred text, and maybe has a less moralistic structure. Both are in a search for something beyond the material world.

IHS: Can you share some of the current work being conducted in your lab?

Dr. Masters: We are interested in whether meaning and purpose can play a role in changing health behaviors. Our studies suggest higher meaning/purpose is related to more physical activity. What we have not yet been able to demonstrate is whether you can alter meaning such that people become more aware of it - meaning salience. For most people, the conscious awareness of meaning occurs relatively sparsely (e.g., at graduations, weddings, funerals, etc.). For meaning to really play a prominent role in your behaviors, it would need to be present daily. We are interested in increasing meaning salience via interventions.

IHS: What would interventions targeting meaning salience look like?

Dr. Masters: We are looking into developing a technology-based, AI intervention. We initially did interviews with people to learn about their top meaningful constructs. We then constructed text messages that used this information and timed the messages to coincide with times they could be physically active. And participants loved it!

The problem is it is labor-intensive. Now we’ve designed a web-based program to conduct the interview, create personalized messages, and schedule when to send them.

IHS: Do you see this ultimately generalizing to other health behaviors?

Dr. Masters: We started with physical activity because it can be measured reasonably well, but we think it would apply to other health behaviors too. We think what is happening is that when you feel you have a meaningful life and you’re aware of that daily, then you want to take care of yourself.

IHS: What direction do you see your research moving in the next few years?

Dr. Masters: We have also been looking at applying the intervention at certain critical points during the lifespan – for example, when people retire, they sometimes face challenges related to meaning/purpose, as well their habits. We see this period of transition as an opportunity where this intervention might be particularly effective.

IHS: Do you have any advice for early career investigators interested in this field?

Dr. Masters: There has been significant growth in positive psychology constructs, many of which tie back to various religious traditions (e.g., forgiveness, gratitude). I think it’s a little easier to do research on positive psychology variables with religious/spiritual connections than it is to do religion/spirituality research, only because of funding.

One of my recommendations is have a couple lines of work that are connected. And maybe you sneak some religion measures into your meaning study. It’s a much easier world than when I started to do this work. It has really developed into a legitimate area of study.

These things are very important to people worldwide. From a public health perspective, on any given weekend an estimated 30% of the U.S. population is in some sort of worship service. This is a great opportunity for public health interventions.

In summary, have a couple of different baskets to put your eggs in, but also be optimistic that we are slowly shifting.

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Keep an eye out for the upcoming grand rounds lecture by our other 2024 Distinguished Scientist Award Recipient, Dr. Amy Ai (12pm ET on 10/18/2024)!

Interested in joining the IHS SIG? Visit the SIG webpage to learn more and add the IHS SIG to your SBM member profile to stay up to date.