 Patricia L. Mabry, Ph.D.
Acting Deputy Director
Dr. Mabry is a Acting Deputy Drector in the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she facilitates the emergence of a new field that integrates systems science with health-related behavioral and social science research. She develops resources and opportunities for the research community which encourage and support the development of behavioral and social science research projects featuring interdisciplinary and Systems Science approaches.
Dr. Mabry has issued funding opportunity announcements in systems science (e.g., PAR-11-314 (R01) and PAR-11-315, Systems Science and Health in the Behavioral and Social Sciences) and developed an annual training course, the Institute on Systems Science and Health (ISSH). She co-leads two computational modeling networks which inform public policies to combat obesity: the Comparative Modeling Network for Obesity Policy (CompMod), which focuses on U.S. policies, and the Collaborative Obesity Modeling Network (COMNet) which focuses on cross country comparisons. In collaboration with CDC, Dr. Mabry initiated and led the production of the 2007 Symposia Series on Systems Science and Health. She was co-chair of the First Annual Workshop on Dynamic Modeling for Health Policy (2009), the conference chair for the 2010 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling, and Prediction (SBP10) and the organizing chair for the 2011 Conference of the System Dynamics Society. 2013 will be another busy year as she is a Program Chair for SBP13 and Program Committee Member for the American Academy of Health Behavior.
Several interdisciplinary themed activities under the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research were led or co-led by Dr Mabry including the Roadmap Interdisciplinary Methodology and Technology Summit in 2006 and the RFA, Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research via Methodological and Technological Innovation in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (R21)
RFA-RM-07-004.
Dr. Mabry has authored a number of peer-reviewed publications including articles in The Lancet, The American Journal of Public Health, and The American Journal of Preventive Medicine. She is a Guest Editor of the March 2010 supplement of The American Journal of Preventive Medicine entitled, Increasing Tobacco Cessation in America: A Consumer Demand Perspective and is also a Guest Editor for the 2011 Special Issue of Research in Human Developmententitled, Embracing Systems Science: New Methodologies for Developmental Science. She also is the lead Guest Editor for an upcoming supplement issue of Health Education and Behavior entitled, Systems Science Applications in Health Promotion and Public Health,
Dr. Mabry has been recognized for her leadership in systems science and health. She was a member of the team that received the inaugural Applied Systems Thinking Prize from the Applied Systems Thinking Institute in 2008, and received an individual Merit Award from NIH in 2008 for her leadership in systems science. In 2011, she received the NIH Director’s Award for her contributions to NCCOR and became a Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in 2012.
Communication and cohesion are key for a newly developing field like systems science, To nurture connections in this nascent field, Dr. Mabry has developed the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences-Systems Science Listserv which is a free weekly newsletter on issues relevant to systems science. For more information, please visit: http://obssr.od.nih.gov/scientific_areas/methodology/systems_science/index.aspx#listserv
Dr. Mabry earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia (1996) and since then has worked in small business, academia, and government. Her professional experience falls into several broad categories: conducting original intervention research for tobacco cessation, providing psychological services to individuals and couples, teaching behavioral aspects of medicine to medical students, writing NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant applications, and programmatic development at NIH.
Contact Details
Email: mabryp@od.nih.gov
|