Marino A. Bruce, PhD, MSRC, MDiv

Founding Director of UHPH Collaboratories
Founding Director of Graduate Education and Research

Marino A. Bruce, PhD, MSRC, MDiv is the Founding Director of UHPH Collaboratories and the Founding Director of Graduate Education and Research. He is also a Clinical Professor of Behavioral and Social Sciences and the Associate Dean for Research and in the Fertitta Family College of Medicine as well as affiliate faculty in the Departments of African American Studies and Sociology in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. Dr. Bruce is a sociologist and population health scientist who examines the full range of factors, including faith, religion, and spirituality, that influence cognitive and physical functioning among populations will elevated risks for chronic diseases over the life course and across generations. He is principal investigator on NIH grants from the National Institute on Aging, National Heart, Lung, and Blood, National Institute for General Medical Sciences, and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and his publications has appeared in leading journals in aging, medicine, public health, and men’s health. Dr. Bruce has published over 120 peer-reviewed article and book chapters, served as editor of five (5) books, and is serving a five-year appointment on the Publications Committee of the American Public Health Association where he is leading a taskforce creating the ‘Determinants of Health’ book series to be published by APHA press. 

He has earned graduate degrees in Rehabilitation Counseling and Divinity and has served multiple African American congregations as an ordained Baptist minister for over two decades. Dr. Bruce seeks to understand the degree to which salutogenic elements such as faith, contemplative practices, and fellowship can “get under the skin” to slow declines in physical and cognitive functioning among populations with elevated risks for poor health outcomes. He is committed to leveraging assets and strengths present in individuals, families, communities, institutions, and science to improve health for everyone over the life course and across generations. Dr. Bruce earned a PhD in Sociology from North Carolina State University and received postdoctoral training in Family Medicine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in Biobehavioral Health from Duke University.