Macaran (Mac) Baird, MD, MS

Macaran (Mac) Baird, MD, MS is professor and head of the University of Minnesota Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. His research focuses on the integration of behavioral medicine into primary care medicine, population-based health, family therapy, and chronic illness. For the past three years, Dr. Baird has worked with a multidisciplinary team to develop the Minnesota Complexity Assessment Method©, currently being tested in collaboration with a variety of practices in Minnesota.

Previously, he was the medical director of Mayo Management Services, Inc., an insurance arm of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; Associate Medical Director of Primary Care for HealthPartners, a Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota HMO; Chair of the State University of New York–Syracuse Department of Family Medicine; and Residency Director of the University of Oklahoma Department of Family Medicine.

Dr. Baird’s national involvement includes serving on the board of directors and past president of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), past president of the STFM Foundation Board of Directors, and board member of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association (CFHA). From 2000-2006 he served as a member of the Robert Wood Johnson Depression in Primary Care National Advisory Council, and in 2001, co-chaired the Institute of Medicine (IOM) Report on Health and Behavior.

Dr. Baird began his medical career in 1978 as a rural family physician and family therapist in a small group in Wabasha, Minnesota. He has been a delegate of the Minnesota Medical Association (MMA) and served on several of their state committees. He is chair of the board of directors of UCare, the fourth largest HMO in Minnesota.