Dunbar had a fundamental role in the stages of the clinical pastoral education movement that brought seminarians and clergy into hospitals and clinics for pastoral care and counseling training, but was not actively involved much after the late 1930s. She believed in the importance of clinical training for clergy and the role of symbols in understanding illness. She was the first medical director (1930-1942) of the Council for the Clinical Training of Theological Students in New York City. She was also the director of the Joint Committee on Religion and Medicine of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America and the New York Academy of Medicine from 1931 to 1936. She was an instructor at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute from 1941 to 1949. She founded the American Psychosomatic Society in 1942 and was the first editor of its journal "Psychosomatic Medicine".