Vickie Mays, PhD
UCLA, Los Angeles, California, USA

Vickie M. Mays, Ph.D., MSPH, Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Health Policy & Management, Fielding School of Public Health is Director of the UCLA BRITE Center for Science, Research & Policy. She is an expert in the behavioral, cognitive and biopsychosocial mechanisms of the role of social determinants in mental and physical health disparities. Well known in particular for her research demonstrating the ways in which race-based discrimination contributes to health disparities she has applied this expertise to the current Covid-19 pandemic identifying a series of social risk factors that if addressed could help slow new infections in Black/Latinx populations in particular. Professor Mays has a long history in developing research methods including the use of AI and mhealth to better identify risk cluster profiles of racial/ethnic minority groups and developing mental health interventions for such epidemics as HIV/AIDS, weather-related disasters such Katrina and Los Angeles based civil unrest.