Macaran Baird, MD, MS

Macaran Baird, MD, MS, is professor emeritus and retired department head in the University of Minnesota Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. Dr. Baird began his career as a family physician and family therapist in rural Wabasha, Minnesota, in 1978. He co-authored his first book, Family Therapy and Family Medicine, in 1983.  Soon after that he launched his academic career by first serving as an assistant professor and residency director at the University of Oklahoma, followed by his appointment in 1987 as professor and chair of the Department of Family Medicine at the State University of New York Medical School, Syracuse, New York. In 1995, Dr. Baird returned to Minnesota as associate medical director for primary care for Health Partners and then moved to Rochester as medical director of the Mayo Health Plan and professor in family medicine at Mayo Clinic, Rochester. He returned to the Twin Cities as professor and head, Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School and chair of the board of UCare. He held these positions from July 2002 until his first retirement in December 2017. As he was retiring, he was asked to serve as CEO for the University of Minnesota Physicians and co-president of M Health Fairview.

Dr. Baird is a past-president of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine and was a founding member of the Collaborative Family Health Care Association. In 1999 he co-chaired the COGME 13^th Report to Congress: Educating the Physician Workforce for the Future and in 2001 he was co-chair of the Health and Behavior Report for the Institute of Medicine. He has received awards from the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM), the Collaborative Family Health Care Association (CFHA), the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Minnesota Academy of Family Physicians, the Minnesota Medical Association and the University of Minnesota Medical School. He has authored and edited three books and several government and/or foundation reports related to mental health; he has also published over 40 papers and book chapters.

During Dr. Baird’s tenure at the University of Minnesota, the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health grew in the number of faculty, from 50 to around 100, and residency programs grew from six to eight. Funded research and research-focused faculty grew to make the DFMCH the third-highest NIH-funded department of family medicine in the US.

For two years after retiring, Dr. Baird served as a consultant to the dean. Among his duties during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic was to be part of the three-member team that did the first layer of review to assess the risk/benefit balance for all medical school clinical research grants. Many principal investigators were asked to delay patient enrollment to reduce the risk of infection for patients and staff. NIH and other funding sources did not penalize grant recipients for these actions.

Dr. Baird is now retired and lives with his wife, Kris, in Lake City, Minnesota.