Jerome Tobis

Jerome Tobis⇓, who as founding chair of four highly regarded physical medical and rehabilitation departments in the United States, promoted restoration of function and full participation in society to several groups that the medical profession had often considered “hopeless,” died on 3 February. He was 96 and had stomach cancer.

Tobis’s career was grounded by the ethic that, regardless of physical limitation, disability, or health insurance or socioeconomic status, all people should have equal access to the best that medicine and rehabilitation had to offer. During Tobis’s 50-plus years as a leader in physical medicine and rehabilitation, he worked hard to include people with varying levels of marginality into the nascent field of physical medicine and rehabilitation, from children with cerebral palsy; to young adults with spinal cord injuries; to older people limited by strokes, cardiovascular disease, and falls; and many more. His efforts were part of a broad expansion and respect …