Malik earned his PhD from the University of Sargodha and completed a doctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He is a research fellow at the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research, and non-resident faculty scholar at the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University. His research interests include wellbeing, illness experiences, religious and spiritual coping and health. He possesses a special interest in this teacher wellbeing study because his father was a teacher for 35 years.