Michael D. Knox (born 1946 in Wyandotte, Michigan, and raised in Grosse Ile, Michigan), is an American educator, psychologist, author, and Antiwar activist, living in Dunedin, Florida. He is an Emeritus Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy; Affiliate Distinguished Professor, in the Department of Internal Medicine; and Affiliate Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Global Health at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, Florida.
Education
Ph.D., University of Michigan, Department of Psychology, 1974
M.A., University of Michigan, Department of Psychology, 1973
M.S.W., University of Michigan, School of Social Work, 1971
B.A., Eastern Michigan University, Biology Major, Chemistry and Psychology Minors, 1968
Knox is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. Fellow status in both organizations is granted in recognition of outstanding and distinguished contributions to the science and profession of psychology. In 2005 he was inducted into Sigma Xi, the international honor society of research scientists and engineers.
Career
Knox's career has spanned the fields and topics of death and dying, community mental health, ethics, the prevention of HIV/AIDS, and peace. Much of his academic work has been accomplished at the University of South Florida, where he has been a faculty member since 1986. At USF, Knox has been responsible for more than $50 million in grants and other external funding to the university. He developed grant-funded collaborations with the USF Departments of Internal Medicine, Psychiatry, Pediatrics, and Criminology and with the USF College of Public Health. He also developed grant-funded consortia with the University of California at San Francisco, University of Florida, University of Miami, University of Puerto Rico, University of the Virgin Islands, Florida A&M University, and Emory University.
As a tenured professor, he served on dissertation committees and taught courses including "Honors Seminar in Applied Ethics", "Death and Dying", and "HIV and Mental Health". He has published and presented widely, primarily on the topics of HIV/AIDS, peace, community mental health, and planning for death. In 1995, he co-authored LAST WISHES: A Handbook to Guide Your Survivors. The book has been favorably reviewed by The Journal of the American Medical Association, the British medical journal The Lancet, and The Saturday Evening Post. He is the senior editor and contributor to HIV and Community Mental Healthcare, a book published in 1998 by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Mental health work and scholarship
Before his tenure at the University of South Florida, Knox was director of the Western Tidewater Mental Health Center in Virginia (1978–1986). He also served on the faculty of the Eastern Virginia Medical School and on the board of directors of the Eastern Virginia Health Systems Agency. He has held a variety of leadership positions in national and state professional organizations and has been honored many times for his work.
Michael Knox joined the USF faculty in 1986. For nine years, Knox headed the only academic department of community mental health in the United States. As department chair, he directed an 80-member staff and oversaw an annual budget of $2.3 million. In 1995 and again in 1996, he was elected president of the USF Faculty Senate. He was elected chair of the Advisory Council of Faculty Senates for 1997/1998, an organization that represented all ten state universities and provided consultation to the chancellor and Florida Board of Regents regarding academic issues. Since 1997 he has held the title of distinguished university professor at USF. In 1999, as part of a sabbatical assignment related to end-of-life care, he served as a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford in England. His work is characterized by long-standing leadership positions in the field of community mental health, including service on the board of directors of the National Council of Community Mental Health Centers and advisory positions to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals. In addition, he chaired the first steering committee for the National Registry of Community Mental Health Services and has conducted site reviews nationwide for the federal Center for Mental Health Services.
HIV/AIDS work and scholarship
As founder and director of the USF Center for HIV Education and Research, Knox oversaw an annual budget of well over $3 million. Since 1988, the USF Center has provided continuing education to more than 500,000 health and mental healthcare professionals and students.