Douglas MacKay

Douglas MacKay is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Associate Chair in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a Core Faculty Member at the UNC Center for Bioethics and the Philosophy, Politics, & Economics Program. Holding a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, he previously completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Department of Bioethics.

Research & Teaching Interests focus on the intersection of justice and public policy, including health equity, ethics of public policy research, and federal justice systems. His work addresses topics like global economic inequality, ethical dimensions of immigration policy, healthcare priority setting, and the ethics of international clinical research.

Publications & Trends emphasize ethical frameworks for public policy interventions, such as soda taxation, human genome editing governance, and fair subject selection in research. His recent work explores policy experiments, clinical trial ethics, and taxation philosophy.

Labs/Teams include affiliations with the UNC Center for Bioethics and the Philosophy, Politics, & Economics Program, reflecting interdisciplinary collaborations in ethics and policy analysis.