Daniella Reyes

Quinnipiac University Physician Assistant, Class of 2019

I lived in South America until I was six, then spent most of my childhood in the suburbs outside the city of Chicago, Illinois. I received my Bachelor’s degree in health sciences in 2017 from Quinnipiac University.

I began volunteering in a nursing home, and have also worked with younger populations as a volunteer for a muscular dystrophy summer camp. For the past two years, I have worked for MacNeal Hospital in Chicago in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. Additionally over those years, I have worked as a Patient Care Assistant for a teenage patient with muscular dystrophy.

My travels and work experience have exposed me to a number of underserved communities, and these points of contact have made me passionately desire to focus my life on helping those most in need. In particular, I have seen the effect of diminished access to health care in my father’s home country of Panama and in my time working at MacNeal Hospital, primarily with uninsured patients also lacking community-based means of material support. It is because of this exposure, both domestic and international, that I want to join the Urban Service Track Program, so that I can learn how to provide excellent health care to underserved communities and prevent in such communities the suffering a lack of adequate access brings.