• Affiliated Faculty

Thomas Blair, M.D., M.S.

Partner Physician, Department of Psychiatry, Southern California Permanente Medical Group

Assistant Clinical Professor (voluntary), Psychiatry, UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior

 

Dr. Blair is an ER, consultation-liaison, and outpatient psychiatrist with Kaiser Permanente.  He completed residency in Psychiatry at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior in 2016, after receiving an MD from the University of California, San Francisco (2012) and an MS from the University of California, Berkeley (2010). He is broadly interested in the history of medicine, medical ethics, and health services. Specific research areas include solitary confinement and mental illness in the criminal justice system; the history of mental health professionals’ responses to the HIV/AIDS epidemic; and psychiatric ER operations, from both logistical and ethical perspectives. He is also a member of the Board of the UCLA Psychiatric Clinical Faculty Association (PCFA) and coordinator of the PCFA’s resident mentoring program.

  • trblair@mednet.ucla.edu
Selected Publications

Reiter K, Ventura J, Lovell D, Augustine D, Barragan M, Blair T, Chesnut K, Dashtgard P, Gonzalez G, Pifer N, Strong J. Psychological Distress in Solitary Confinement: Symptoms, Severity, and Prevalence, 2017-18. American Journal of Public Health, 110(S1):S56-S62, January 2020.

Reiter K, Blair TR. Superlative Subjects, Institutional Futility, and the Limits of Punishment. Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law, 23(3):162-93, Fall 2018.

Blair TR. Safe Sex in the 1970s: Community Practitioners on the Eve of AIDS. American Journal of Public Health, 107(6):872-879, June 2017.

Blair TR, Wiener Z, Seroussi A, Tang L, O’Hora J, Cheung E. Resident Workflow and Psychiatric Emergency Consultation: Identifying Factors for Quality Improvement in a Training Environment. Academic Psychiatry, 41(3):377-380, June 2017.

Blair TR. Plague Doctors in the HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Mental Health Professionals and the “San Francisco Model,” 1981-1990. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 90(2):279-311, Summer 2016.

Blair TR and Espinoza RT. Medicare, Medicaid, and Mental Health: Historical Perspectives on Reforms before the U.S. Congress. Journal of the American Medical Association, 314(21):2231-2, December 1, 2015.

Blair TR. “Community Ambassadors” for South Asian Elder Immigrants: Late-Life Acculturation and the Roles of Community Health Workers. Social Science & Medicine, 75(10):1769-1777, November 2012.