Katherine Moon

Kat Moon’s research portfolio focuses on the epidemiology of environmental determinants of chronic disease in middle-aged and older adults, particularly, cardiovascular, diabetes, and cognitive outcomes. She is particularly interested in understanding how co-exposures to non-chemical stressors, such as social determinants and psychosocial stress, can interact with environmental determinants to produce environmental health disparities. As part of Dr. Moon’s multi-disciplinary research, she engages with and collaborates with public health practitioners, policymakers, and communities. She uses both molecular epidemiologic tools, such as biomarkers of exposure to toxic metals/metalloids, and geospatial measures of contextual exposures, such as greenspace and built environment features, to measure environmental hazards. Dr. Moon’s research includes both traditional epidemiologic cohort studies, taking advantage of intensive data collection and stored biospecimens, as well as administrative data sources, such as electronic health records (EHR), that offer deep clinical data and large populations at relatively low cost. Her early work focused on understanding the effects of low-to-moderate levels of arsenic exposure on cardiovascular and diabetes outcomes and in quantifying the dose-response relation of arsenic exposure with cardiovascular disease across low to high levels of exposure to environmental arsenic. She has extensive experience working with the Strong Heart Study, a longitudinal cohort study of cardiovascular disease in American Indians. As a postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Moon conducted epidemiologic studies of type 2 diabetes and Lyme disease within the Geisinger electronic health record, evaluating an array of social, built, food, natural, and physical activity environmental features, as part of the Geisinger Environmental Health Institute. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a human health risk assessor at an environmental consulting company, conducting risk assessments to characterize the nature and magnitude of health risks to humans from chemical contaminants in the US and worldwide.