S. Jason Moore, PhD, PA, is a physician associate (PA) whose career joins clinical medicine, epidemiologic science, medical education, and a life in challenging natural environments. For over two decades, Moore has practiced in major health systems and critical access hospitals. He has conducted and published peer-reviewed research, taught students in classroom and field settings, and led expeditions across remote terrain on five continents. His path to the PA profession was not linear or predictable. It arose from genuine curiosity, a longing for meaningful work, and his refusal to separate who he was from what he did.
Early Life and Formative Influences
Moore grew up on a small barrier island in southern New Jersey, in a close-knit community where much of his extended family lived along the same stretch of shoreline. Life there was tied to the ocean. Summers meant lifeguarding, surfing, and fishing in a local economy shaped largely by tourism.
As a child he was drawn to books on science, nature, and exploration. While many people on the island expected to pursue careers in nearby cities such as Philadelphia or New York, Moore was interested in the wider world beyond the Jersey coast.
Moore initially studied advertising and graphic design in college, drawn to art and storytelling, but the corporate path did not hold his interest. A conversation with a family friend practicing podiatry redirected him toward medicine. He returned to school to complete the sciences, worked as a paramedic and ski patroller, and ultimately trained as a physician associate.
Clinical Career and Healthcare Leadership
Moore trained in general surgery, trauma, and critical care at major health systems and academic centers in Arizona and Colorado. These high-acuity environments built his technical foundation and shaped his response to high-pressure decisions. Over time, he was drawn to a practice where improvisation and judgment mattered most.
Today, Moore practices emergency medicine and serves as the trauma medical director at a rural hospital in Montana, where he is the sole provider in the emergency department. The work, as he describes it, is deeply meaningful precisely because of its demands. With limited resources and significant distance from tertiary care, the environment requires the same disciplined reasoning and adaptive thinking that wilderness medicine demands — the ability to synthesize imperfect information and act with confidence when the stakes are high.
Earlier, Moore held leadership roles within healthcare organizations, gaining insight into system design, operational sustainability, and the challenges facing rural medicine. These experiences inform his clinical practice and shape his perspective on what rural hospitals need to thrive.
Research, Epidemiology, and Contributions to the PA Profession
Jason Moore holds a PhD in epidemiology and public health, a credential that positions him at the intersection of clinical practice and population-level evidence. His academic training emphasized the interpretation of clinical research, disease patterns, and the translation of epidemiologic data into a useful understanding for practitioners. That interpretive lens has become central to how he approaches medicine, teaching, and writing.
His research has been published in peer-reviewed medical journals across several areas of clinical medicine and public health. Among his published works is a 2021 pilot study in the Journal of the American Academy of PAs titled “Comparing Physicians and PAs as Solo Providers in a Rural ED.” The study examined nearly 26,000 patient encounters at a critical access hospital in Arizona over nearly a three-year period, comparing efficiency, efficacy, resource use, and patient satisfaction between physicians and PAs functioning as solo providers. While emphasizing that emergency medicine–trained physicians remain the gold standard of care, the study found no clinically meaningful differences in commonly cited metrics—including transfer rates, 72-hour returns, and mortality—between the two provider types, while PAs had higher patient satisfaction scores. The work contributed data to ongoing discussions about how rural emergency departments can be staffed safely when physician coverage is limited.
For Moore, epidemiologic training is valuable beyond research. He believes medicine contains large amounts of information of varying quality, and that the critical skill is learning how to evaluate what matters. This emphasis on evidence informs both his teaching and clinical work.
Education has remained central throughout Moore’s career. He has led clinical teaching, developed wilderness medicine training for professionals, and designed educational programs focused on deep understanding rather than memorization. These ideas are reflected in his book, which emphasizes the importance of understanding the reasons behind medical decisions.
Wilderness Medicine, Guiding, and the Outdoor Industry
Few PAs have bridged clinical medicine and challenging outdoor environments as fully as Jason Moore. His outdoor industry career includes guiding whitewater rafting, fly fishing, and backcountry expeditions, teaching wilderness medicine and risk management, and exploring remote terrain worldwide.
He has traveled widely in the Amazon, Central America, Africa, and Australia, and joined a first-descent river expedition in Tibet—an undertaking that required careful preparation and sound judgment in remote and unpredictable conditions.
Through Island Fly, the company he founded, Moore leads international fly-fishing trips to Argentina, Colombia, the Bahamas, and Nicaragua, and continues teaching wilderness medicine to guides and travelers. This work reflects his commitment to integrating clinical skills and exploration.
The Why Behind Wilderness Medicine
These threads—clinical training, epidemiology, years in remote environments, and medical education—came together in Jason Moore’s book, The Why Behind Wilderness Medicine. Rather than a standard manual, it explains the principles that guide medical decision-making when resources are limited and clinicians must adapt to the environment.
The book reflects Moore’s belief that understanding the reasoning behind medical decisions is more durable than memorizing lists, particularly in unpredictable settings. Writing it brought together his experience in surgery, emergency medicine, epidemiology, and more than two decades of field experience.
Legacy and Current Life
Asked about his most meaningful achievement, Moore says it is difficult to choose just one. Becoming a PA, completing surgical and emergency medicine training, earning a PhD, and writing his book are interconnected—each building on the last.
Moore values education above all in the PA profession. Teaching, he says, is about perspective, not just procedures. The way clinicians learn to see problems shapes their solutions, practices, and careers. Helping students develop this perspective is what he finds most fulfilling.
Moore lives with his wife, Ashley, on the coast of North Carolina, where he divides his time between medicine, writing, guiding, and spending as much time on the water as possible. The balance reflects the same interests that have shaped many of his decisions over the course of his career.
To watch Dr. Moore’s Masterclass interview, please click here.
Acknowledgments:
This biography was written by Randy Danielsen with the assistance of Jason Moore. It was submitted to the Society in October 2025. All photographs are courtesy of Dr. Moore.
When using information from this biography, please provide the proper citation described within the PA History Society Terms of Use.
