Tara McKay

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society
Assistant Professor of Health Policy; Affiliated Faculty, Department of Sociology; Affiliated Faculty, Program for LGBTQ Health; Affiliated Faculty, Tennessee Center for Aids Research; Affiliated Faculty, Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health

Dr. Tara McKay, PhD (she/her), is Assistant Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society and a nationally recognized expert in the field of LGBTQ population health, policy, and aging. She is a co-founder and Associate Director of the Vanderbilt LGBTQ+ Policy Lab, which was recently recognized by the National Institutes of Health for advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in health research. She is also Associate Director of the Vanderbilt Center for Research on Inequality and Health.

Dr. McKay’s research examines the social and policy contexts that shape health over the life course, primarily among LGBTQ+ populations in the US and African contexts. Her work has been cited over 2200+ times and engaged with by academic colleagues writing from institutions in over 35 countries. Her research has been supported by over $4.2 million in grants as Principal Investigator from the National Institutes of Health and several smaller awards as Principal Investigator/Co-Investigator from the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Commonwealth Foundation totaling over $1.5 million. She was recently featured on the PBS Aging Matters series (episode: Aging with Pride, June 2022). PBS also produced an 2:30 minute special focusing on the findings of her research.