Dominique Tobbell
McLeod 5034
225 Jeanette Lancaster Way
Charlottesville, VA 22903
Biography
Dominique Tobbell, PhD, is Centennial Distinguished Professor of Nursing and director of the Eleanor Crowder Bjoring Center for Nursing History of Inquiry at the University of Virginia.
Dr. Tobbell’s research examines the complex political, economic, and social relationships that developed among academic institutions, governments, and the health care industry in the decades after World War II and assesses the implications of those relationships for the current health care system. Her current research examines the role of nurses and nurse practitioners in providing care to undeserved communities in the United States since the 1960s. It uses a series of case studies of community-based nurse-led clinics to 1) analyze how the nursing model of care shaped the types of health services that nurses provided in these clinics; 2) assess the impact of the clinics on the communities they served; and 3) analyze how evolving health policies and political debates over health care financing, reimbursement, and scope of practice legislation constrained nurses’ ability to practice independently and influenced the sustainability, governance, and community impact of the nurse-led clinics.
Dr. Tobbell is the author of Dr. Nurse: Science, Politics, and the Transformation of American Nursing (University of Chicago Press, 2022), which was awarded the 2023 Lavinia L. Dock Award by the American Association of the History of Nursing; Pills, Power, and Policy: The Struggle for Drug Reform in Cold War America and its Consequences (University of California Press, 2012); Health Informatics at Minnesota: The First Fifty Years (Minneapolis: Tasora Books, 2015); and co-editor of Troubling Access: Global Health and Pharmacology (Lausanne: Frontiers Media SA, 2021).
Dr. Tobbell has been the recipient of several fellowships, grants, and awards. She has taught a variety of courses on the history of 20th-century American healthcare, with an emphasis on the ways that race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability determine Americans’ experiences with and access to healthcare.
Dr. Tobbell earned an undergraduate degree in biochemistry from the University of Manchester, and both a Master of Art and a PhD in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania.