Yury Parra

Yury Parra was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia. She graduated from New York University in 2008 with a B.A. in Biology and is currently as second year medical student at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). During her undergraduate years with the support of Youth Venture and the NYU Reynolds foundations, she founded Heart to Heart, an organization that conducts free blood pressure screenings among communities with a high risk for hypertension and also provides health education. She is currently in the Urban Medicine and the Patient-Centered Medicine Scholars Program at UIC. Both of these programs aim to expose medical students to the needs of underserved communities and train them to better serve these communities. As a co-president of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) chapter at UIC, she is involved in coordinating programs that enhance the experience of medical students beyond the classroom. These promote an understanding of the social factors that impact health of patients and encourage medical students to take a proactive role in these issues. With the support of other medical students and faculty at UIC, she co-founded and is co-directing the Global Health Leaders Program, which provides medical students a forum to learn about global health issues and connect with students and professionals in this field.