About

Cardiologist and evolutionary biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, MD, PhD, is redrawing the boundaries of human medicine. Chair of the National Academies' Board on Animal Health Sciences, Conservation, and Research and a past President of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Dr. Natterson-Horowitz pushes against the barriers separating human, animal and planetary health.

Research topics

• Ecology
• Biology
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Bioinformatics
• Environmental ethics
• Neuroscience
• Evolutionary biology
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• The future of evolutionary medicine: sparking innovation in biomedicine and public health

  Frontiers in Science · 2023 · 54 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Medicine
  • Biology
  • Ecology

  innovations in chemistry, antimicrobial usage, and phage therapy). With respect to public health, the insight that many modern human pathologies (e.g., obesity) result from mismatches between the ecologies in which we evolved and our modern environments has important implications for disease prevention. Life-history evolution can also shed important light on patterns of disease burden, for example in reproductive health. Experience during the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has underlined the critical role of evolutionary dynamics (e.g., with respect to virulence and transmissibility) in predicting and managing this and future pandemics, and in using evolutionary principles to understand and address aspects of human behavior that impede biomedical innovation and public health (e.g., unhealthy behaviors and vaccine hesitancy). In conclusion, greater interdisciplinary collaboration is vital to systematically leverage the insight-generating power of evolutionary medicine to better understand, prevent, and treat existing and emerging threats to human, animal, and planetary health.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 110 citations

  • Sociology
  • Environmental ethics
  • Psychology

  Humans and viruses have been coevolving for millennia. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19) has been particularly successful in evading our evolved defenses. The outcome has been tragic-across the globe, millions have been sickened and hundreds of thousands have died. Moreover, the quarantine has radically changed the structure of our lives, with devastating social and economic consequences that are likely to unfold for years. An evolutionary perspective can help us understand the progression and consequences of the pandemic. Here, a diverse group of scientists, with expertise from evolutionary medicine to cultural evolution, provide insights about the pandemic and its aftermath. At the most granular level, we consider how viruses might affect social behavior, and how quarantine, ironically, could make us susceptible to other maladies, due to a lack of microbial exposure. At the psychological level, we describe the ways in which the pandemic can affect mating behavior, cooperation (or the lack thereof), and gender norms, and how we can use disgust to better activate native "behavioral immunity" to combat disease spread. At the cultural level, we describe shifting cultural norms and how we might harness them to better combat disease and the negative social consequences of the pandemic. These insights can be used to craft solutions to problems produced by the pandemic and to lay the groundwork for a scientific agenda to capture and understand what has become, in effect, a worldwide social experiment.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Basil M. Baccouche

  Stanford University

  18 shared

• Daniel T. Blumstein

  University of California, Los Angeles

  14 shared

• Morten Smerup

  13 shared

• Gregg C. Fonarow

  University of California, Los Angeles

  11 shared

• Olujimi A. Ajijola

  Texas Cardiac Arrhythmia

  9 shared

• Joseph Hadaya

  Core Laboratories (United States)

  9 shared

• Michèle A. Hamilton

  Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

  9 shared

• Peter Stenvinkel

  Karolinska University Hospital

  8 shared

Education

• PhD, Molecular, Cellular, and Integrative Physiology

  UCLA Life Sciences

• Fellow, Cardiology

  UCLA Division of Cardiology

  1995

• M.D.

  UCSF School of Medicine

  1987

• History and Science, A.M.

  Harvard College

  1984

• History and Science, A.B.

  Harvard College

  1982

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• Edward Giovannuccih-267
• Kristen Andersonh-263