Dr. Phyllis MacGilvray, MD, FAAFP serves as the Dean of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville (SOMG). Additionally, she is a clinical professor in the Department of Family Medicine at SOMG and serves as a Prisma Health Family Medicine physician.
A compassionate leader in primary care and a medical education expert, Dr. MacGilvray is proud to lead the medical school in its next chapter.
Dr. MacGilvray is the first medical school dean in the country board certified in lifestyle medicine, which focuses on the use of evidence-based lifestyle interventions to prevent, treat and reverse chronic diseases. She is committed to advancing efforts to help prepare future physicians dedicated to improving the health and wellness of communities, and striving for the highest standards in all we do to transform education, research, and patient care.
In her previous role, Dr. MacGilvray served, from 2022 to 2024, as the senior associate dean for academic affairs at SOMG, overseeing all aspects of undergraduate medical education, lifestyle medicine, and the school’s new Primary Care Accelerated Track (PCAT) program. As a native South Carolinian from Abbeville, she has maintained a full-scope family medicine practice for 20 years. Dr. MacGilvray is a practicing physician in Greenville, in family medicine with obstetrics.
Dean MacGilvray earned her Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry from Clemson University and her Doctor of Medicine degree from the Medical University of South Carolina. She completed residency training in family medicine at the University of Vermont, followed by academic leadership positions at Eastern Virginia Medical School, Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune and at the University of Texas Health San Antonio.
After returning home to South Carolina and starting with Prisma Health in 2018 as Vice Chair for Academic Affairs in family medicine, Dr. MacGilvray was then selected as the department chair in 2020. She led the development of two new graduate medical education programs, which tripled the number of family medicine residency positions at Prisma. During the pandemic, her leadership of thirty primary care clinics raised morale and yielded the highest levels of recruitment and retention, and improved quality clinical outcomes. Dr. MacGilvray also advocated for new resources for primary care delivery to underserved patients across the upstate. For SOMG, she facilitated students in the Integration of the Practice of Medicine course, and currently still teaches lifestyle medicine topics for preclerkship students.