Dr. Kuhn has a specific research interest in the interplay between animals, the environment and infectious diseases, and in particular using novel ways of detecting and describing infectious disease outbreaks. She worked for almost 15 years at the national Danish institute of infectious diseases as a senior epidemiologist in charge of One Health collaborations, national surveillance of Campylobacter and Shigella and as principal investigator on register-based analyses and case-control and cohort studies. Together with her group, she has generated new and important knowledge on the transmission, distribution and seasonality of campylobacteriosis and solved numerous outbreaks caused by food-and waterborne pathogens.
Since transitioning to the Hudson College of Public Health in 2020, Dr. Kuhn has worked with public health, city and municipality leaders to manage COVID-19 across Oklahoma. She is also one of the founders of the cross-disciplinary OU Wastewaster Surveillance team, working to detect ‘hotspots’ of COVID-19 for guiding testing and vaccination efforts. The recent expansion of the wastewater surveillance to include vector-borne and food-and waterborne pathogens signals an important new development for the State of Oklahoma as a supplement to traditional disease surveillance.
Dr. Kuhn has served as an expert consultant on infectious diseases and climate change for the World Health Organization and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as a nominated expert on food-and waterborne diseases and antimicrobial resistance for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.