Dr. Robert Parker has been named Director of McKinley Health Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, pending formal approval of the University’s Board of Trustees. He succeeds Dr. Robert Palinkas, who served in this capacity for 15 years until his retirement in December 2016.

Dr. Parker is a Board Certified Internal Medicine physician. After completing medical training at the University of Virginia and his residency at North Carolina Baptist Hospital, Dr. Parker spent the next eighteen years at Carle, during which time he completed an Executive MBA through the University of Illinois’ College of Business. Dr. Parker was an active physician, educator, and administrator at Carle, the University of Illinois’ College of Medicine (Urbana campus), and at Health Alliance Medical Plan. He served as CEO for five years at Carle Clinic before accepting the CEO position at Mt. Sinai Health System in Chicago.

Dr. Parker was at Mt. Sinai for nine years before returning to Health Alliance in an expanded CMO role that included many of the operational units within the health plan. Since leaving Health Alliance in December 2014, Dr. Parker has had an active consulting practice, clinical practices at McKinley Health Center and at Mile Square, and is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he both teaches and co-directs the Executive MHA program.

“I am very confident that Dr. Parker will be highly successful as Director of McKinley Health Center, and that he will have a lot of support from Student Affairs and the University community,” said Lowa Mwilambwe, Associate Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “We feel very fortunate to have a talented physician and experienced administrator of Dr. Parker’s caliber join us in this role. His background and experiences fit well with McKinley’s needs and should help make the transition a seamless one.”

Dr. Parker will begin his duties November 1.

 

Danita

 

Dr. Danita M. B. Young

Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign