Hispanic Heritage Month

By Corrinne Fahl

National Hispanic Heritage Month

We would like to celebrate our Hispanic & Latinx faculty in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Our Hispanic faculty members have increased from 2.39% Hispanic in 2012 to 3.34% Hispanic in 2022.   Although there has been only marginal progress in recruiting and retaining our self-identified Hispanic faculty, their contributions have outpowered their representation.  We are pleased to highlight five of our faculty members in celebrations of National Hispanic Heritage Month. 

Dr. Iris Reyes, MD FACEP was the first Latina to be promoted to Full Professor at the Perelman School of Medicine

Iris Reyes headshot

Dr. Reyes 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 for over 30 years.  Dr. Reyes has served the Perelman School of Medicine in many capacities over the years including having served as an Advisory Dean for the PSOM Office of Student Affairs for 13 years and Past Chair of the Medical Faculty Senate.

 She has been honored with numerous awards including induction into the PSOM Gold Humanism Honor Society and the AOA Honor Medical Society. She was named a 2021 Al Día Top Doctor by the Philadelphia based Spanish language newspaper. In addition, Dr. Reyes was inducted into Penn Medicine’s Class of 2021 Academy of Master Clinicians.

Dr. Reyes’s passion for improving diversity, equity and inclusion in Medicine and the need to improve the pipeline and support for under-represented minority residents and fellows led to her founding the UPHS-CHOP Alliance of Minority Physicians (AMP) in 2012. AMP promotes the recruitment, retention, mentoring and 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 an exponential increase in the number of minority trainees at Penn Medicine and CHOP.

Please join us in celebrating four of our other notable Hispanic faculty:

faculty