Rebecca Campbell-Montalvo, PhD
Rebecca Campbell-Montalvo, PhD is an anthropologist who studies how people are served by institutions, such as healthcare systems and schools. She uses approaches ground in access, brokerage, social networks, and cultural models to do basic science as well as support the application of these insights into programming to effect change. She is a tenure track Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Emergency Medicine, Morsani College of Medicine at the University of South Florida--where she directs the AQUASS Research Lab (Advancing Quality and Uniform Access through the Social Sciences). She jointly appointed as Social Science Analyst at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital.
At USF, she is the principal investigator on the study "Information and Attitudes about Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy: Factors Affecting Clinical Trial Participation and Experience among Veterans with TBI"--which will be the largest study to-date employing social network mapping among persons with TBI and their care partners. Among other emphases, it will map how social networks operate among persons with TBI and affect their healthcare resource access, engagement, and participation. At VA, she is a team member on I-HEAL (Improving Health Care Access and Engagement for Veterans and Service Members with TBI Morbidity), a CDMRP-funded project to improve how people with TBI access care, especially contributing to efforts adapting a dementia staff playbook to the TBI context and designing an electronic medical record flag to prompt providers to include caregivers. Also at VA, she leads qualitative investigation on “Developing an evidence-based model to provide patient-centered care to rural Veterans with advanced chronic kidney disease” as well as “ALIGNing the Veterans and VHA Goals for equitable Kidney Failure Care”--efforts to increase access to home dialysis. Previously, she supported evaluation on other projects, like The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services’ (SAMHSA) project REACH (Recovery, Engagement, Acceptance, Compassion, Hope), which investigated the effectiveness of interventions on opioid use and mental health.
Campbell-Montalvo’s work in education spans K-doctoral+. Her book, The Latinization of Indigenous Students (Lexington Books, 2023) explores the multi-level intersecting factors affecting how Indigenous Latinx K-12 students experience schooling in the U.S. In addition, she is PI or Co-PI on three NSF projects to broaden participation in STEM, including work using mixed methods, totaling more than $6,000,000 in funding.
Prior to joining the University of South Florida in 2024, Dr. Campbell-Montalvo was at the University of Connecticut in the Neag School of Education since 2016, where she served as Assistant Research Professor in her most recent role.