David Hufford

In 2007, after 33 years on the faculty of Penn State College of Medicine, Hufford retired from his positions as University Professor and Chair of Medical Humanities, and Professor of Neural & Behavioral Science, and Family & Community Medicine. He is now University Professor Emeritus at the College of Medicine. Hufford’s research has primarily been concerned with spirituality and health, especially spiritual visions such as near-death experiences. He wrote the chapter “Methodology” in the 2012 Oxford Textbook of Spirituality in Healthcare. Hufford was first author on “Spiritual Fitness” in the 2010 special issue of Military Medicine, and is currently completing a study of spiritual experiences among combat veterans funded by the Department of Defense. His book The Terror That Comes in the Night (University of Pennsylvania Press) reports his research on beliefs about spiritual evil found all over the world and their relationship to sleep paralysis; it was recently translated into Japanese and Korean. Hufford is a founding member of the Editorial Boards of Spirituality in Clinical Practice, Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine and Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, and a founding member of the Cancer Advisory Panel on Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the National Cancer Institute (NIH, Bethesda). From 2010 through 2016, Hufford was Senior Fellow in Spirituality at the Samueli Institute, a medical research organization in Alexandria, Virginia. Hufford has published widely and has lectured on spirituality and health throughout the United States.

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