Monique Hedderson, PhD, MPH is Associate Director of the Women’s and Children’s Health section at the Division of Research Kaiser Permanente Northern California. She completed a master’s degree in public health and a doctoral degree in epidemiology at the University of Washington School of Public Health. She has more than 20 years research experience within the KPNC integrated health care system.  Her research takes an interdisciplinary approach at the interface of disease etiology and prevention strategies in women’s and children’s health across the lifespan. Specifically, her work has largely sought to understand how potentially modifiable factors before and during early pregnancy contribute to the risk of metabolic complications during pregnancy, postpartum and childhood. Her goal is to develop and test innovative prevention and treatment strategies for high-risk populations that can be implemented into clinical practice. She has led NIH-funded studies examining predictors and sequelae of gestational diabetes, gestational weight gain, and related cardiometabolic conditions in the peripartum period.  She also has over ten years of experience working on randomized trials of lifestyle interventions to improve health behaviors among pregnant and postpartum individuals, implemented in the KPNC health system. She is currently the Principal Investigator of several federally funded projects including a cluster randomized trial of a mobile health intervention integrated in the healthcare setting, leveraging technology to improve gestational weight gain among pregnant individuals with overweight/obesity.