Mayra Estrella, PhD, MPH

Assistant Professor, Department of Internal Medicine
Mayra L. Estrella, PhD, MPH
Rush Medical College
Assistant Professor, Department of Internal Medicine

Epidemiologist, Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center

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  • Mayra L. Estrella, PhD, MPH, is an epidemiologist at the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center (RADC) and Assistant Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Community Epidemiology, at Rush University Medical Center. Overall, she is interested in the socioenvironmental and psychosocial determinants of cardiovascular, cognitive, and brain health in middle-aged and older adults. Her research particularly focuses on Hispanics/Latinos living in the US and Puerto Rico with the aim of promoting brain health equity.

    Estrella earned her PhD in Community Health Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Puerto Rico’s School of Public Health. She completed a T32 post-doctoral fellowship in Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology & Related Chronic Diseases in Minority Populations at UIC. She previously received an NHLBI Diversity Supplement and is currently a recipient of an NIMHD Loan Repayment Program award. Her NIA K01 Career Development Award focuses on exploring modifiable protective factors related to healthy cognitive aging among Latinos in the US and Puerto Rico, while also providing new training in theories of resilience and reserve, and novel neuroimaging techniques. She is leading the Neurocognitive Ancillary Study to PROSPECT (Puerto Rico Observational Study of Psychosocial, Environmental, and Chronic disease Trends), which seeks to examine risk and resilience factors related to cognition on the island of Puerto Rico.