Suerie Moon

Suerie Moon is a public health expert and Professor of Practise at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. Her research considers global health, health equity and pandemic preparedness.

Early life and education
Moon became interested in health inequality as a child. She was one of five children born in the United States to South Korean immigrant parents. Moon studied history at Yale University. The North Korean famine prompted Moon to study international affairs. She moved to Princeton University for her graduate studies, where she specialised in international relations, and Harvard University to study public policy. Her doctoral research considered neoliberalism and global health. Moon joined the Peace Corps, where she worked on public health education in South Africa. She started working at Médecins Sans Frontières shortly after graduating, when HIV was becoming more prevalent and access to treatment was rare.

Research and career
Moon was a lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Here she worked as a special advisor to Julio Frenk, and studied how to navigate politics to bring about changes in public health. She was Director of the Harvard-LSHTM panel on the Global Response to Ebola, which she believes encouraged the World Health Organization to prioritise outbreak control. She co-founded the Forum on Global Governance for Health.

In 2016 Moon joined the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies as Professor of Practise. Moon works at the interface of research and policy in global health. She looks to define the functions required to protect global health and to better understand power disparities that contribute to health inequity. Moon has driven initiatives to improve global access to medicines (e.g. by advocating for new business models for research and development in pharmaceuticals) and to strengthen governance of outbreak preparedness.

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic Moon became involved with the World Health Organization Pandemic Accord.