Dr. Moon Young Kim | Nursing and Health Professions | Research Excellence Award 

Washington University in St. Louis | United States

Dr. Moon Young Kim, PhD, MSOT, is a rehabilitation researcher and licensed occupational therapist whose work centers on understanding and enhancing participation in daily life among aging populations and individuals with neurological and neurocognitive conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, dementia, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and systemic lupus erythematosus. He earned his PhD in Rehabilitation and Participation Science from Washington University in St. Louis, where his doctoral research focused on the conceptualization, measurement, and biopsychosocial contributors to participation in people living with Parkinson’s disease. His research integrates psychological factors such as cognition and depression with social and environmental determinants, advancing a holistic understanding of functional participation beyond impairment-based models. Dr. Kim has extensive expertise in diverse research methodologies, including longitudinal and cross-sectional quantitative analyses, systematic reviews, qualitative research, mixed-methods studies, and clinical investigations. He has contributed to and led more than 10 completed research projects, many supported by competitive funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and national agencies in South Korea. His work has resulted in 18 peer-reviewed journal publications in leading SCI- and Scopus-indexed journals, with over 160 citations, reflecting strong scholarly impact. His publications provide important insights into how cognitive dysfunction, depressive symptoms, and social support influence activity participation, quality of life, and well-being in neurological populations. A key contribution of Dr. Kim’s research is his recent longitudinal study on activity participation trajectories in Parkinson’s disease, which identified depressive symptoms as a critical within-person predictor of declining participation and social support as a protective factor for sustained engagement. Dr. Kim is actively engaged in the academic community through editorial roles with prominent journals, including BMJ Open, Disability and Rehabilitation, Journal of Patient-Reported Outcomes, and Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. He has delivered invited lectures and presented extensively at international conferences, receiving multiple awards for excellence in research and scientific communication. His professional affiliations include the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine, the American Occupational Therapy Association, and the Korean Association of Occupational Therapists.

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