Cynthia A. Connolly, PhD, RN, FAAN, a historian and pediatric nurse practitioner, is the Rosemarie B. Greco Term Endowed Associate Professor in Advocacy at Penn Nursing. She is also Associate Director at the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing and Co-Faculty Director at the Field Center for Children’s Policy, Practice, and Research. Connolly’s research analyzes the historical forces that have shaped children’s health care delivery and family policy in the United States. Her book, Children and Drug Safety: Balancing Risk and Protection in Twentieth Century America (2018, Rutgers University Press), received the American Public Health Association’s Viseltear Award. It was funded through a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research grant and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. An earlier book, Saving Sickly Children: The Tuberculosis Preventorium in American Life, 1909-1970 received the Lavinia Dock Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing.
She received her BSN from the University of Pennsylvania, MSN from the University of Rochester, and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a legislative fellowship in the office of Paul Wellstone in the US Senate.