Dr. Klaits' animating questions center on why, how, and with what consequences people come to feel that their well-being is or is not bound up with that of others.  His research investigates these issues in medical, religious, and political dimensions. Currently, with the support of a grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, he is exploring how members of African-American charismatic churches in Buffalo, New York understand tithing as a means of eliciting blessings for themselves and members of their families and communities under circumstances that deeply jeopardize them.