Dr. Kevin Allen Mack, an associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco, died last Thursday after the UCSF shuttle bus he was riding in on his way to work collided with a big rig in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood. He was 52.
The crash occurred at the intersection of Octavia and Oak Streets at around 6:20 a.m. on July 14 when a tractor-trailer truck carrying four cars collided with the shuttle bus, killing Mack and injuring two of about 15 shuttle passengers and the shuttle bus driver, according to San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Lt. Troy Dangerfield.
According to Dangerfield, the driver — whose name was not released — and two passengers suffered nonlife-threatening injuries while Mack was pronounced dead at the scene after being ejected from the shuttle and pinned under the truck. The truck driver was uninjured.
The incident is currently under investigation by the police department, but the effects of Mack’s death are already being felt by his friends, family and colleagues.
Mack was also the director of educational technology and faculty development in the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program. He joined the UCSF faculty in 2000 after he graduated from the University of Hawaii School of Medicine in 1994 and completed his residency program at Harvard University.
While working at the Joint Medical Program, Mack became a key developer of the program’s Problem-Based Learning curriculum — an alternative to lecture-based curricula that focuses on crafting problems professionals will face in practice using simulated patients.
“Kevin’s passion was the use of Problem-Based Learning in medical education,” said Amin Azzam, head of the program’s Problem-Based Learning curriculum and a close personal friend and colleague of Mack’s. “Most medical schools use it as a tiny fraction of the students’ lives, but at (UC) Berkeley, it is the vast majority of the curriculum.”
Azzam added that thanks to Mack’s passion and enthusiasm for teaching, the program became one of only three medical schools in the country that primarily uses this type of curriculum.
In addition to establishing the curriculum in the Bay Area, Mack worked with the World Health Organization and embarked on multiple trips to Ethiopia in order to bring the same type of program — one that Coco Auerswald, an assistant adjunct professor in the UC Berkeley School of Public Health and a former colleague of Mack’s, said is “an ideal model for low-resource settings” — to Africa.
“Kevin was amazing because he didn’t have one focus — he had multiple foci and was really a visionary in our program,” Auerswald said.
In a professional setting, Mack was known as an energetic and passionate individual who served as a role model to faculty and students alike.
“Kevin embodies living life to the fullest more than the vast majority of us ever have,” Azzam said. “He was open with his heart and soul with workers, staff, co-workers and students in the same way with friends.”
Auerswald said that due to his charisma and approachability, Mack also served as a mentor figure for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students who sought advice from him.
“Kevin was very proud of his family and very proud of being a father and husband and was really a model for students,” she said. “Many students who are gay or questioning relied on Kevin either directly as a mentor or out there as a member of the community.”
A memorial service will be held on Thursday at Cole Hall at UCSF’s Parnassus Campus. Mack will be laid to rest in Hawaii, a place he was deeply connected to throughout his life.
Mack is survived by his husband Naoki, his daughter Aki and his son Nobu.
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