Overview/research interests:
Dr. Patricia L. Mabry, PhD is an interdisciplinary scientist with strong grounding in behavioral and social science, public/population health, artificial intelligence, and systems science methodologies. She applies cutting edge methodologies to research questions in health and healthcare, science of science, and tobacco control policy. She spent many years at NIH including the National Cancer Institute’s Tobacco Control Research Branch, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) and the Office of Disease Prevention (ODP). Dr. Mabry founded the NIH Systems Science program and the annual training program, Institute on Systems Science and Health. At ODP, she led a team in developing a machine learning-based portfolio analysis tool for classifying NIH-funded prevention research. She was the founding Executive Director and a Sr. Research Scientist at the Indiana University Network Science Institute where she co-developed CADRE, a cloud-based science gateway to empower researchers to perform reproducible big data analytics on bibliographic data.
Dr. Mabry joined HealthPartners Institute in 2019 where she has led the development of a dynamic simulation model to inform health plan strategies for increasing colorectal cancer screening uptake. In 2022, she received her first federal grant award as PI (Co-PI: Xiaozhong Liu; NSF SCISIPBIO Award # 2122232) to construct Heterogeneous Scholarly Graphs and use them to explicate the role of a possible Matthew Mechanism in NIH funding. In 2022, she also received an award to evaluate the feasibility of a shared decision-making simulation tool for patients with Type 2 diabetes (Abbott contract #MCSA 15127759v1). In 2024, she received a UG3/UH3 from NIDCR as MPI (contact PI: D. Brad Rindal NIH award # UG3/UH3-DE030063) for a project to develop a behavioral intervention to support dental practitioners in promoting the HPV vaccine to their patients. In 2025, she received a grant as contact PI (MPI: Deepika Appana) to lead HealthPartners Institute’s participation in the inaugural cohort of collaborating sites in the NIH AIM-AHEAD Federated Research Network (subaward of NIH Prime Award #1OTAOD032581-02-787). In January 2026, her R01 proposal as contact PI, (MPI: Xiaozhong Liu) to NINR received a 5th percentile in peer review. If funded, this project will establish an evaluation framework for emergency department (ED) decision-making and an accompanying benchmark dataset which we will develop with expert human annotation. Lastly we will use the framework to evaluate the performance of several large language models and real world human decision-makers on standardized ED decision making tasks. She currently is a Co-Investigator on an NIH/NCI R01 funded project (Award # R01CA263542, PI: Michael Maciosek) using microsimulation to explore how state and national tobacco control policies impact both combustible and electronic cigarette use and ultimately impact population health and costs.
Honors and career highlights:
Dr. Mabry has published scientific articles on tobacco cessation, tobacco policy modeling, systems science, reproducibility, mentoring, and more. Career highlights include contributions to the 2014 Surgeon General’s Report on the Health Consequences of Smoking, co-leading the NIH Envision obesity modeling network, and chairing the 3rd International Meeting on Social Computing Behavioral Modeling and Prediction (SBP). Dr. Mabry’s accolades include: Golden Apple Teaching Awards (2) from the Medical University of South Carolina, awards for federal service, the inaugural 2008 Applied Systems Thinking Award, being elected Fellow of the Society of Behavioral Medicine in 2012, and receiving the 2021Lifetime Achievement Award from SBP-BRIMS (Social Computing Behavioral Modeling and Prediction – Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation). In October 2025, she was nominated for the Titan Award for significant contributions towards advancing the mission vision and values of Observational Health Data Science and Informatics (OHDSI).
Joined the Institute: 2019
Education and Qualifications:
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina 1997-1998, Post-doctoral Fellow in Clinical Psychology
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 1996, Ph.D. (Clinical Psychology)
Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina 1995-1996, Internship in Clinical Psychology
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virgina 1991-05-30 | M.A. (Psychology)
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (aka Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, Virginia 1985, B.S. (Accounting)
National Institutes of Health: Bethesda, Maryland 2003-2005 Credentialed as Medical Staff at NIH Clinical Center (Clinical Psychologist)
South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, Columbia, South Carolina 1998-2002, Clinical Psychologist - license #711 (SC Board of Examiners in Psychology)
State of Maryland, Department of Health: Baltimore, MD, US 2002-2005, Licensed Clinical Psychologist - license #03922 (MD Board of Examiners of Psychologists)
Current research activities and funding:
1. Active: Co-Investigator on an NIH R01 funded project PI: M. Maciosek), The Interplay of ENDS and Tobacco Control Policy: Impact on the Population Harms of Tobacco – award# R01CA263542
2. Active: Supported by internal funding to lead HealthPartners Institute’s participation in the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI, https://www.ohdsi.org/) Evidence Network (OEN, https://ohdsi.github.io/EvidenceNetwork/) as a Data Partner Organization.
3. Active: Contact PI: NIH AIM-AHEAD Federated Network Site for the Midwest: Longitudinal EHR Data to Address Questions on Medical, Dental, and Behavioral Health – award# OT2OD032581-02-787
4. Pending: Contact PI: An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Understanding Trade-offs in Emergency Department Decision-making - application ID R01NR22258 (scored 5th percentile, pending council review scheduled for 01/27//2026)
Service - Peer Reviewer:
National Institutes of Health, Year 4 AIM-AHEAD “Public-Private Partnerships to Improve Population Health Using AI/ML” (P4) Program. 2025.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Systems for Action: Systems and Services Research to Build a Culture of Health (S4A) Program. Review Committee Member, 2018-2020.
Austrian Science Fund (FWF). Review Panel Member. 2018, 2020.
National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI) on Complex Systems. Member, Review Committee, review and evaluation of outcomes of seed grants awarded in systems science. 2014.
Ad hoc grant review panel member; National Cancer Institute, Special Populations Networks for Cancer Awareness Research and Training – Pilot Projects. 2002(2), 2003.
Other:
2020-present, Board of Directors Chair and Independent Director, Computer Simulation & Advanced Research Technologies (CSART) LTD. CSART is a registered charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC).
2018-2021, Member, National Advisory Committee, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Systems for Action: Systems and Services Research to Build a Culture of Health (S4A) Program.
2019-2025, Member, Steering Committee, Systems-science Informed Public Health Economic Research for Non-communicable Disease Prevention Consortium (SIPHER). PI: Petra Sylvia Meier, University of Sheffield, UK. Award # MR/S037578/2 from UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP), a multi-funder initiative. This research initiative was designed to inform policy by analyzing the complex, systemic causes of non-communicable diseases.
2011, Member, Committee of Visitors, U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate. Reviewed grant portfolios and other information to assess and report on NSF’s performance in various areas related to programs within the Office of SBE Multidisciplinary Activities.
Website Profiles:
ORCID Profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6374-8679
Google Scholar Profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4U6OGPAAAAAJ&hl=en&inst=3553279128648049742
Professional Works (330 total works as of 01/25/2026) – includes peer-reviewed publications, book chapters, conference papers, posters, invited talks, workshops, panel presentations, etc.
