PROJECT: A hybrid health education and peer support program to address low rates of exclusive long-term breastfeeding practices among low-income Latina women in Los Angeles County.

Virginia Reyes is a second-year UCLA Master in Public Health graduate student in the Department of Community Health Sciences. Her interests are nutrition, food environments, maternal and child health, and equal access to health care and health insurance for underserved communities.

During her undergraduate career at UC Berkeley, Reyes worked in the Berkeley and Oakland communities as a medical Spanish interpreter in two school organizations. After graduating, she worked as a care coordinator in a Federally Qualified Health Center where she assisted patients with applying to Medical, CalFresh, and Covered CA, and provided local health resources. This is where her passion for public health started when she witnessed the health disparities within low-income communities and patients, especially mothers and their children.

Reyes is currently a UCLA Maternal and Child Health Training Fellow, Communications Chair for the Maternal and Child Health Student Interest Group (MCH SIG), and Public Health Coordinator for the UCLA Mobile Health Clinic Project.

Reyes graduated from UC Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology. She is the first in her family to attend college and is the proud daughter of two immigrant parents.