Margarita Reina

Senior Epidemiologist, City of Chicago, Department of Public Health

Margarita Reina was born in the Uptown neighborhood, but was raised in Arlington Heights, IL and graduated from Prospect High School. She attended the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. After receiving her B.A. is Political Science and a minor in Latin American History, she began her graduate studies at Los Andes University in Bogota, Colombia. She returned to Chicago after surviving multiple gunshot wounds and began her career at the Cook County Department of Public Health as a case worker and was an active participant in the Hispanic/Latino Advisory Council to find solutions and resources for the Latino community in the Northwest Cook County. Ms. Reina completed her Master’s in Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago specializing in Epidemiology.

In 1999, Ms. Reina started at the Chicago Department of Public Health as an Epidemiologist. In her long career in public health, she has worked in the areas of HIV/AIDS, Maternal and Child Health, Chronic Diseases, Tuberculosis, Transportation, Violence Prevention, Community Engagement, COVID-19 and Place-based Epidemiology. Her work centers around the need for addressing racial equity and connecting community partners, academic institutions, and hospitals to create solutions so that all Chicagoans can live, work, and prosper.

As a data scientist and community leader during the COVID-19 pandemic, Margarita serves on the steering committee of the Racial Equity Rapid Response Team (RERRT), Illinois Unidos, Chicagoland Vaccine Partnership, and the Community Lead at the Chicago Department of Public Health to COVID-19 for vaccine equity. As a mother of three children and a Local School Council member, she wants to continue to make a difference and make sure that community members have a voice and those solutions be community centered.