Profile
suerie-moon2

Suerie MOON

Co-Director, Global Health Centre
Professor of Practice, Interdisciplinary Programmes and International Relations/Political Science
Spoken languages
English, French
Areas of expertise
  • Global governance
  • Global health
  • Technological innovation, access and sustainable development
  • Formal and informal rules governing global health, human rights, development assistance, trade and investment
  • Outbreaks of infectious disease and global health security
  • Power and the political and commercial determinants of health

Profile


Professor Moon seeks to combine academically rigorous research and analysis with policy relevance and impact. Her work is broadly concerned with the intersection of global governance and public health. Her theoretical contributions to the field include conceptualizing the global health system, defining the functions the system must perform to adequately protect public health, global public goods for health, and identifying the types of governance gaps and power disparities that contribute to health inequity. She has developed specialized policy expertise on how to achieve more globally equitable innovation and access to medicines; strengthen the global governance of outbreak preparedness and response; make trade, investment and intellectual property rules more health-sensitive; and address perennial weaknesses in development assistance for health. Her current research projects focus on the international sharing of outbreak-prone pathogens and related benefits, and new business models of pharmaceutical R&D. She also directs the Knowledge Network on Innovation and Access to Medicines, a project that aims to maximize the contributions of research and analysis to strengthening the pharmaceutical innovation system, a topic she has researched for over twenty years.

Prior to joining the Graduate Institute in 2016, she was Lecturer on Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She was Study Director of the Harvard-LSHTM Independent Panel on the Global Response to Ebola, head of Harvard’s research team on the Lancet Commission on Global Governance for Health, and co-directed the Project on Innovation and Access to Technologies for Sustainable Development at the Kennedy School of Government. She also co-founded and led the Forum on Global Governance for Health, a focal point at the university for research, debate and strategic convening on issues at the intersection of global governance and health. She has continued to teach and advise doctoral students as adjunct Lecturer at the Harvard Chan School.

Her work has been published in leading academic journals and covered in mainstream media. Professor Moon speaks regularly at academic conferences, government and intergovernmental meetings, legislative hearings, and civil society convenings. She has served on a number of expert advisory bodies and boards, including most recently as Secretary of the Board of Directors of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative, WHO Fair Pricing Forum Advisory Group, Expert Advisory Group to the UN Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines, Proposal Review Committee of UNITAID, and US National Academies of Medicine Forum on Antimicrobial Threats. She is currently the Principal Investigator on three research projects, and the recipient of a PRIMA grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. She received a BA in history from Yale, an MPA in international relations from Princeton, and PhD in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Research Projects

Knowledge Network for Innovation and Access to Medicines
Understanding the Norms and Practices of Pathogen-Sharing
New Business Models for Global Access to Medicines
Polio Eradication

Selected Publications

Full list available at Google Scholar


Articles in Peer Reviewed Journals

Chapters in Peer Reviewed Edited Volumes

  • Moon S (forthcoming) How Much do Health Actors from the Global South Influence Global Health Governance? in Rethinking Stakeholder Participation in Global Governance: Challenges and Reforms in Financial and Health Institutions. Ayelet Berman, Tim Büthe, Martino Maggetti, Joost Pauwelyn, eds. Oxford University Press.
  • Moon S, ‘t Hoen EFM (2019) The Global Politics of Access to Medicines: From 1.0 to 2.0. In C McInnes, K Lee, J Youde eds., Oxford Handbook on Global Health Politics. Available: {Citation}
  • Moon S and Bezruki A (2019) The Global Governance of Outbreaks. In Klaus Hurrelmann, Mujaheed Shaikh and Claus Wendt, eds. The Governance Report 2019: Health Governance. pp67-82. Oxford University Press.
  • Moon S. Global health law and global governance for health: concepts, tools, actors, power and functions. (2018) In Research Handbook on Global Health Law, editors Gian Luca Burci and Brigit Toebes. Edgar Elgar.
  • Moon S, Balasubramaniam T (2018) The World Trade Organization: Carving Out the Right to Health to Promote Access to Medicines and Tobacco Control in the Trade Arena. in Human Rights in Global Health: Rights-Based Governance for a Globalizing World, editors Benjamin Mason-Meier and Lawrence O. Gostin. Oxford University Press, 2018.
  • Suzuki E, Moon S (2016) “Informal channels of corporate influence on global health policymaking: A mapping of strategies across four industries.” In Kenworthy N, Mackenzie R, and Lee K, eds. Case Studies on Corporations and Global Health Governance. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
  • Moon S (2015) “Health in the global economy.” In Frenk J and Hoffman SJ, eds. “To Save Humanity from Hell”: What Matters Most for a Healthy Future. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Moon S, Szlezák N (2013) “Rule-makers, Rule-shapers, and Rule-takers: What role for Asia in the Global Governance of Intellectual Property Rules and Global Health?” In Lee K, Pang T, Tan Y, eds. Asia’s Role in Governing Global Health. London: Routledge.
     

Books

  • Informal Norms in Global Governance: Human Rights, Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines, author with Wolfgang Hein.  2013. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
  • An Invitation to Public Health: Clear Thinking for Effective Action (An e-book of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health). Co-author with Julio Frenk and Josh Salomon. 2015.
  • Embedding Neoliberalism: Global Health and the Evolution of the Global Intellectual Property Regime (1995-2009). PhD Dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2010.
     

Recent Working Papers


Other Publications: Newspaper, Magazines, Meeting Reports, Policy Papers, Blogs, Other

Activities

  • 2019-2023: Swiss National Science Foundation, PRIMA award. New business models for governing innovation and global access to medicines. Principal Investigator
  • 2018-2020: Swiss Network for International Studies. Understanding the norms and practices of pathogen- and benefit-sharing for global health security. Principal Investigator
  • 2019: UNICEF-UNDP-World Bank-WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases. Analysing the data from the Portfolio-to-Impact (P2I) R&D modeling tool for non-commercial R&D
  • 2017-present: Secretary, Board of Directors, Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, Geneva
  • 2017-present: Member, World Health Organization, Expert Advisory Panel on Health Science and Technology Policy, 2017-present
  • 2017-present: Member, Forum on Microbial Threats, US National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine
  • 2016-present: Member, World Health Organization, Advisory Group on Fair Pricing of Medicines, 2016-present
  • 2010-present: Member, UNITAID Expert Proposal Review Committee