Rate My Professor Tom Mackie

Thomas Mackie is Professor of Health Policy and Management in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He holds a PhD and an MPH. Mackie's research specializes in mental health services research, with a focus on access, policy, and programs, particularly for children and adolescents. His work examines psychotropic medication oversight in foster care, barriers to mental health services for youth aging out of foster care, detection and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder in early intervention, inequalities in ADHD diagnosis intersecting gender, race, class, and ethnicity, and strategies for stakeholder engagement in community-academic research partnerships to advance mental health equity.

Mackie has authored influential publications, including 'Estimating the costs of medicalization' (Conrad, Mackie, & Mehrotra, Social Science & Medicine, 2010), 'Rapid growth of antipsychotic prescriptions for children who are publicly insured has ceased, but concerns remain' (Crystal et al., Health Affairs, 2016), 'Measuring use of research evidence: the structured interview for evidence use' (Palinkas et al., Research on Social Work Practice, 2016), 'Mental health beliefs and barriers to accessing mental health services in youth aging out of foster care' (Sakai et al., Academic Pediatrics, 2014), 'Fostering psychotropic medication oversight for children in foster care: a national examination of states’ monitoring mechanisms' (Mackie et al., Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 2017), 'What drives detection and diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder? Looking under the hood of a multi-stage screening process in early intervention' (Sheldrick et al., Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 2019), 'Mapping mental health inequalities: The intersecting effects of gender, race, class, and ethnicity on ADHD diagnosis' (Bergey et al., Sociology of Health & Illness, 2022), and 'Effectiveness of screening in early intervention settings to improve diagnosis of autism and reduce health disparities' (Sheldrick et al., JAMA Pediatrics, 2022). In July 2024, he received a $2.1 million award from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute for a pilot study titled 'Improving Research Partnership With Engagement Mapping: A Pilot Study to Advance Engagement Science,' co-led with Karen Tabb Dina at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, focusing on empowering underrepresented communities affected by mental health disparities in research processes. Previously, Mackie served as Associate Professor and Chair of Health Policy and Management at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University.