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Vickie M. Mays, PhD, MSPH
Distinguished Professor Departments of Psychology and Health Policy and Management
University of California, Los Angeles
Bio
Vickie M. Mays, PhD, MSPH is a Distinguished Professor in the UCLA Departments of Psychology and Health Policy and Management. She has served as an Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research Diversity, Chair of the Academic Faculty Senate, Chair of the Undergraduate Council and served on a number of ad hoc committees at UCLA as well as system-wide committees such as the UC Health Care Task Force for the University of California. She has a long-standing interest in the treatment of human subjects and ethical issues which stemmed from her work as one of the early HIV/AIDS researchers in the 80’s. This propelled her initial appointment and eventual service as the Vice Chair on the UCLA Human Protection of Subjects IRB.
Her research is shaped by underlying themes reflecting her interests in furthering empirically based research on underserved populations, particularly ethnic minority communities and women. She examines physical and mental health disparities and recently developed with colleagues a model of social risk and vulnerability for COVID in racial/ethnic/low-income communities.
In addition, Dr. Mays is the Director of the UCLA Center for Bridging Research Innovation, Training and Education on Minority Health Disparities Solutions. This NIH funded center is the source of the development of a curriculum designed to train racial/ethnic minority community members in ethical research principles in order to join the research workforce. The Center has developed a Mexican Spanish version of the CITI training at a seventh-grade reading level in order to make the training available to community members wanting to become involved in the interpretation and production of research data.
Dr. Mays has received a number of awards for her research including APA’s Distinguished Contributions for Research in Public Policy, the AMFAR Lifetime Research award for her women and HIV publications, American Public Health Association’s Carl Taube Lifetime Career Award in Mental Health and a host of others.
Committees
PRIM&R Public Policy Committee, Co-Chair
PRIM&R Nominations & Elections Committee