Epidemiology has long been used to track outbreaks and prevent disease worldwide. Now, those same tools are being used to reduce human suffering in a new way. The Task Force for Global Health’s Focus Area for Compassion and Ethics (FACE) is leading a groundbreaking effort to bring scientific rigor to compassion – the awareness of suffering coupled with the desire to alleviate and prevent it.

This initiative began with convenings in January 2020 and September 2024, when FACE invited scholars, epidemiologists, and other scientists to Atlanta to consider the potential role of epidemiology in understanding and promoting compassion. Participants affirmed that a fundamental role of epidemiology is to understand why events are clustered by time, place, and person. They noted that our human experience of compassion is clustered: we do not experience compassion at all times, in all places, and from all people. Participants also concluded that understanding how and why compassion clusters is likely to be essential for creating more compassionate environments.

Until now, compassion science has focused on improving the ability of individuals, particularly healthcare workers, to respond to suffering with compassion. But compassion is not only an individual skill or attribute. As demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic, without supportive teams, organizations, and communities, it was difficult for healthcare and public health workers, exposed to unrelenting stress and susceptible to burnout, to sustain compassion. Compassionate people need compassionate communities and compassionate systems.

“Compassionate people need compassionate communities and compassionate systems.”

FACE is pleased to announce the next major advance in this initiative: the March 2026 publication of Towards an Epidemiology of Compassion, a special issue of the International Journal of Wellbeing (IJW). With support from The Fetzer Institute, FACE staff organized and served as guest editors, in conjunction with the IJW editors. The special issue includes 20 articles from a multidisciplinary group of scholars in 12 countries. The wide-ranging papers discuss epidemiologic and statistical methods, conceptual frameworks, the lived experience of compassion, measurement challenges and solutions, and insights from allied fields. 

Together, these articles highlight that, while the epidemiology of compassion is still in its infancy as a scientific field, the essential ingredients are already in place. Several related FACE initiatives, such as the Global Health Compassion Rounds, co-hosted with the World Health Organization, have helped to nurture and coalesce a global community of scholars, scientists, and practitioners committed to applying the powerful tools of epidemiology in service of compassion. 

We encourage you to peruse the special issue, reflect on the thoughtful insights of extraordinary colleagues worldwide, and consider the unique contributions we each can make in realizing a more compassionate world.