Lerly Luo
For Ms. Lerly Luo, medical issues are global issues.
In her first year of medical school, Ms. Luo co-founded the first Global Health Conference at the University of British Columbia, which brought together 150 students from diverse backgrounds, building partnerships between health care professionals, engineers and entrepreneurs. Ms. Luo says this conference also helped her reach a major realization: the greatest problems in health care can have relatively simple solutions when examined from a new perspective.
In 2015, Ms. Luo brought her innovative perspective to Singularity University’s Global Solutions Program, a 10-week program based at NASA, where she worked with others from more than 44 countries to create scalable technological solutions to pressing global issues.
“I believe Lerly will play a role in changing the face of medicine”
Ms. Luo has also demonstrated her global health concerns at the grassroots level, travelling to Nairobi, Kenya, to work with Access Afya, a social enterprise creating a model for integrated community health. There, she researched how to provide health care more effectively to Nairobi’s slums and marginalized populations using digital technologies. Closer to home, Ms. Luo has been involved in public health research with homeless youth engaged in injection drug use and sex work in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
In 2018, Ms. Luo was one of nine medical students selected to represent the International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations — an organization representing 1.3 million medical students from more than 100 countries — at the executive board meeting of the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland.
“I believe Lerly will play a role in changing the face of medicine,” stated one of her advisors in reflecting on Ms. Luo’s innovative leadership.