Daniel Tounsel

Daniel Tounsel is a nurse practitioner and attorney that strives to leverage law, medicine, and policy to create health equity in vulnerable communities via interdisciplinary intervention.  He has professional experience in health policy and law at several academic institutions (e.g., University of Chicago, Northwestern Medicine) and clinical experience primarily in underserved areas of Detroit, Chicago and North Carolina. 

Prior to joining SMA, Dan’s efforts to promote health equity includes co-developing a mentoring program at Northwestern Medicine for children displaced from the Cabrini Green housing projects in Chicago. More recently, he coordinated a student-led Medical Legal Partnership intervention in Durham, NC to help vulnerable patients address social determinants of health with legal remedies (e.g., appeal denials of Medicare, Medicaid, disability, wrongful evictions, etc).  Dan also served in the first cohort of the SMA Health Justice fellowship in 2021 and served as a senior adviser to the Health Justice fellowship in 2022.

Dan is an alumni of the University of Michigan (BSN), Indiana University-Bloomington (MPA/JD) and Duke University (MSN).  He currently serves as a primary care provider at Lincoln Community Health Center, an FQHC in Durham, NC.