Iris Reyes, MD

Iris Reyes, MD, FACEP is a Professor of Clinical Emergency at the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) at the University of Pennsylvania. She has served as an Attending Physician in the Emergency Department at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania since completing her fellowship in 1989. Dr. Reyes has served as an Advisory Dean for the PSOM Office of Student Affairs, an Ombudsman, a member of the Admissions Committee at Penn Med, and as a faculty preceptor for the Medical Spanish Elective and the Latino Medical Student Association. Dr. Reyes developed and has precepted the Minority Mentoring Seminar Series (aka “Cracking the Clerkships”) designed to provide mentoring resources for medical students from backgrounds under-represented in Medicine for over 20 years. Her longstanding interest in the impact of cultural diversity on healthcare delivery led to her co- development of a mandatory course for first year medical students at Penn Med. The course was absorbed into the broader “Doctoring Course” and continues to address issues such as racism in Medicine, spirituality in healthcare, and the proper use of interpreters for patients with limited English proficiency. Dr. Reyes’s passion for improving diversity in Medicine and the need to improve the pipeline and support of under-represented minority residents and faculty led to her founding of the UPHS-CHOP Alliance of Minority Physicians (AMP) in 2012. AMP promotes the recruitment, retention, mentoring and the overall success of minority residents and fellows training in the University of Pennsylvania Health System and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. AMP’s efforts have led to a near doubling of the minority residents, fellows and faculty at Penn Medicine and CHOP. It has also promoted an expansion of Visiting clerkship programs for minority medical students from 1 to 15 participating residency programs. This year, AMP faculty members led the charge to demand the elimination of institutional racism at our health systems.