[1] Following high school, she graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in history and science.
[5] Upon completing her formal education, Parsonnet accepted an assistant professor position at Stanford University School of Medicine.
In 1991, she received a 2-year, $60,000 grant from the Infectious Diseases Society of America to support her research into a possible association of gastrointestinal infection by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, with the onset of gastric cancer.
[8] Alongside her new husband Dean Winslow, they created The Eagle Fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in 2015 to provides aid to middle eastern and central American refugees.
[9][10] A few years later, Parsonnet was elected to the National Academy of Medicine for "elucidating how infectious agents cause chronic disease and research on H. pylori’s roles in malignancy and in modulating host immunity that are widely cited in the field of gastric cancer.