People, Profiles

Kevin Mack, director of faculty development at Joint Medical Program, killed in SF bus accident

By Sarah Yang

Dr. Kevin Allen Mack, a faculty member with joint appointments at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and the UCSF Department of Psychiatry, died this morning when the UCSF shuttle bus he was riding in collided with a tractor trailer truck in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood.

Kevin A. Mack (Image courtesy of UCSF)

The crash, currently under investigation by the San Francisco Police Department, also injured the shuttle bus driver and three other passengers.

Mack, 52, was an associate professor of psychiatry at UCSF and director of Educational Technology and Faculty Development in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program (JMP), an accredited five-year graduate program in which students receive a cross-disciplinary medical education that encompasses the humanities, public health and social and behavioral sciences.

Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health and former JMP director, hired Mack in 2000 to help develop the innovative case-based curriculum for students in the joint medical program.

“He was the architect of that curriculum, which is unique to our program and incredibly innovative,” said Swartzberg. “Students learn medicine by working with cases rather than in classes and lectures.”

More recently, Mack began working with the World Health Organization to develop distance learning programs for medical students in Ethiopia.

“He was arguably one of the most brilliant and kindest human beings I’ve ever known in my life,” said Swartzberg.

Stephen Shortell, dean of the School of Public Health, sent a message today sharing the tragic news with faculty and staff. “Kevin was one of those people with always a smile on his face and a tremendously creative person greatly admired and loved by all who knew him. He is a tragic loss not only to our JMP program but to our School community at large,” he said.

Mack is survived by his husband and their two young children.

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