CPRC

Past Research: Professor Moon-Howard’s two decades of research in communities of color focuses on methodological challenges in survey and intervention research in urban communities; contextual and situational factors associated with health behaviors; and HIV and tobacco-related health outcomes and health disparities among African Americans. In the late 1980s, Moon-Howard’s work on a NIDA-funded 30-year cohort study of urban African Americans led to an important 1993 publication in AJPH on HIV sero-prevalence and risk behaviors in that population. A founding research associate of the CDC-funded Harlem Health Promotion Center, Moon-Howard has conducted community-based research to better understand sources of excess mortality in Harlem; developed interventions to address these disparities; and become known through publications in the Journal of Urban Health and AJPH for her collaborations with local churches and faith communities. Moon-Howard’s HIV-related research has included community prevalence studies of HIV risk and infection rates, evaluation of HIV-related services, and the relationship between housing and neighborhood structural factors and HIV related behaviors and outcomes. She has served as PI for intervention studies examining community-based models of care for HIV-positive individuals with co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse. Moon-Howard presented findings from this research to the President’s Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS in 1998. Moon-Howard also served as a consultant to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and evaluate data from efficacy studies in tobacco, alcohol, and drug abuse, HIV transmission, and violence, in order to identify science-based programs which could inform practice.

Present Research: Moon-Howard has been the co-principal investigator on several studies funded by both CDC and NIMH, which use community-based participatory partnership (CBPR) approaches to research. She has published actively from this work and chaired the panel on CBPR at the Association of Schools of Public Health Education Committee Workshop, charged with making recommendations to advance teaching in graduate programs within schools of public health. Moon-Howard has also continued her interest in community factors affecting health throughout the life course, serving as a co-investigator on a CDC and Department of Housing and Urban Development-funded five-year, multi-site randomized trial; this project is evaluating the effectiveness of providing housing to persons living with HIV as a structural intervention to reduce the transmission of HIV and improve treatment outcomes. Building upon this project and several that preceded it, she and a team of colleagues were recently awarded an NIH grant to improve methodological and statistical approaches for analyzing the role of housing-based service delivery on individual and community health outcomes using observational data. Moon-Howard has also examined ethnic-gender differences in HIV risk behaviors. Moon-Howard’s work on contextual influences on HIV in African American communities has, with support from NICHD, explored the role and influence of religious institutions and leadership on HIV/AIDS risk and prevention strategies in African American communities. Her work on religion and HIV has an international component as well, through her research and evaluation efforts with Balm In Gilead, an organization dedicated to mobilizing the Black Church in the fight against HIV/AIDS domestically and in Africa. Papers in preparation describe results of the Balm’s HIV/AIDS Faith Initiate, a study of the religious response to HIV in five African countries (Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania and Zimbabwe) funded through the President’s Emergency Plan for AID Relief.

Future Research: Moon-Howard’s ongoing work on gender differences in tobacco-related health risks among African American women will benefit from access to senior mentors such as Nathanson who are also working on gender and mortality. Moon-Howard’s new work on HIV, examining how gender and institutional influences shape risk factors and testing potential intervention strategies for women and middle-aged subpopulation groups (where new cases have continued to increase), will benefit as well from the opportunities for structured and informal interchange with colleagues such as Parker, Hirsch, Messeri, and Meyer; their work on structural factors shaping HIV risk and structural interventions represents an important opportunity for dialogue on how institutions mediate the relation between inequality and health across diverse contexts.

Professor Moon-Howard's Departmental Biography Page