Leelakrishna Channa

UConn School of Medicine

I was born in Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, India and raised in a nearby village.
After moving to the US, I spent the majority of my youth and adolescence in Glastonbury, Connecticut. I graduated from the University of Connecticut with a double major in healthcare and society, an individualized major, and molecular and cell biology, along with a minor in healthcare management and insurance studies.

During high school and college, I volunteered at both the Hospital for Special Care and Hartford Hospital, and served as an undergraduate research assistant at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. I was extremely active in student government at UConn, through which I gained an appreciation for differences in lived experiences and worked to improve the college experiences of students from diverse backgrounds. I also worked for UConn’s Student Health and Wellness to target and improve public health initiatives using data-driven analytical methods, and participated in a university-wide Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) coalition.

I became interested in the Urban Service Track/AHEC (UST/AS) Scholars Program after volunteering for the Migrant Farmworker Clinics and attending two deeply impactful retreats. These experiences demonstrated to me both the potential reach of medicine and the existing inequities in our present healthcare system. Through the UST/AS Program, I hope to gain a deeper appreciation of the interprofessional nature of medicine, as well as to improve my knowledge of issues that affect underserved communities. This professional and personal development will ultimately help me become a better-prepared provider and allow me to intervene in health policy as well as practice.