Melissa MacKay

Dr. Melissa MacKay is an assistant professor in public health in the Department of Population Medicine at the University of Guelph, where she serves as the Graduate Program Coordinator for the Master of Public Health program. She holds an MPH and PhD in Public Health from the University of Guelph.

MacKay is a public health scholar and practitioner with extensive experience in health communication, knowledge mobilization and public health education. Her career includes roles in academia, local public health units, non-profit organizations, government and private-sector consultancies. She previously served as a faculty member in Interdisciplinary Studies at Conestoga College and as an Instructor in the Master of Public Health program at the University of Guelph.

MacKay completed two postdoctoral fellowships. Her first fellowship was at the University of Guelph in the Health by Design Lab, focusing on public health communication competencies, climate adaptation in the built environment and health information assessment. Her second fellowship at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) explored the responsible and trustworthy use of generative AI in public health. During her doctoral and postdoctoral work, MacKay received a Population Medicine Scholarship for Student Excellence, a National Collaborating Centres for Public Health Knowledge Translation Student Award and a Mitacs Accelerate Postdoctoral Award.

Dr. MacKay's research focuses on how people navigate complex and contested health information environments, and how trust between communities and public health institutions is built, maintained, or eroded in that process.

Women's health communication is a primary area of her work, with particular attention to body image, hormone-related health conditions, and aging. She examines the information environments surrounding women’s health conditions and issues, analyzing credibility signals, commercialization, and accuracy in social media content, and explores the care-seeking experiences of women navigating significant gaps in health system care.

She also investigates vaccine communication, focusing on how trust shapes vaccine hesitancy and public engagement with health information. This includes examining the role of spokespersons, channels, and social media in shaping how communities receive, interpret, and respond to health messages across different populations and contexts.

Participatory governance of digital health is a third area of her research. She examines how communities, practitioners, and organizations can meaningfully participate in decisions about the use of digital technologies in public health, including co-design approaches to AI governance and the responsible and equity-informed integration of generative AI in health communication.

Her research uses qualitative, participatory approaches and mixed methods, treating integrated knowledge mobilization as a core component of the research process to ensure findings have an impact on policies, programs, practices, and communities' well-being. She has also contributed to the development of national public health communication competency frameworks.

POPM*6560 - Practicum I
POPM*6510 - Health Promotion
POPM*6590 - Practicum II

If you're considering graduate research in women's health communication, vaccine communication, health misinformation, crisis or risk communication, or social media and digital health communication, Dr. MacKay would be pleased to hear from you. Students with interests in body image, hormone-related health conditions, aging, or the responsible and equity-informed use of generative AI in public health are also encouraged to reach out. Please send an email with a brief introduction, your research interests, and a copy of your CV or resume. Undergraduate students interested in thesis supervision or independent study with aligned research interests are also encouraged to get in touch.

Find MacKay’s current list of publications on Google Scholar and PubMed.