Rebecca Campbell-Montalvo, PhD

Rebecca Campbell-Montalvo, PhD, is an anthropologist studying how social relationships and institutional structures shape access to resources, engagement, and health outcomes. Her research integrates social network analysis, cultural models, brokerage, and neuroanthropology to identify how socially structured experience influences learning, behavior, patient decision-making, and neuroplasticity, and to translate these insights into clinical and system-level interventions.

She is a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Medical Anthropology in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the 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). A former Social Science Analyst at James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital in Tampa, she currently serves as a Research Associate with the Malcolm Randall VA Medical Center in Gainesville.

At USF, Dr. Campbell-Montalvo is Principal Investigator of “Information and Attitudes about Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (IA-HBOT): Factors Affecting Clinical Trial Participation and Experience among Veterans with TBI,” the largest study to date using social network mapping among persons with TBI and their care partners. Embedded within a $28 million State of Florida–funded HBOT clinical trial, IA-HBOT examines how network structure and composition shape trial access, engagement, and experience among Veterans and Service Members with mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI). She also serves as Co-Principal Investigator on the $5 million National Science Foundation-funded ACCEYSS project, which uses network-informed approaches to increase rigorous course-taking across middle school, high school, and postsecondary STEM+C pathways in the United States.

At the VA, she leads qualitative and implementation-focused nephrology research, including “Developing an Evidence-Based Model to Provide Patient-Centered Care to Rural Veterans with Advanced Chronic Kidney Disease” and “ALIGNing the Veterans and VHA Goals for Equitable Kidney Failure Care,” both aimed at expanding access to home dialysis. This work examines how network members shape how patient education becomes intelligible and actionable. Her VA work also includes initiatives to improve TBI care through telehealth policy development, inpatient care protocols, and electronic medical record tools that support caregiver inclusion.

Dr. Campbell-Montalvo is the author of The Latinization of Indigenous Students (Lexington Books, 2023), which examines the intersecting social and institutional factors shaping K–12 educational experiences in the United States.

Before joining USF in 2024, she was on the faculty at the University of Connecticut, where she served as Assistant Research Professor.