Pediatrician provides a voice for youth traumatized by family separation

Growing up in Brentwood,Dr. Elizabeth Barnert was raised to be acutely aware of two versions of Los Angeles — one of privilege and one of social injustice.Her psychiatrist father instilled in his daughter a love of science and big-picture thinking. Her mother, who fled Castro ’s Cuba alone at 15, worked as a social worker counseling troubled high-school students, many of them first-generation Americans who butted heads with their immigrant parents over issues like cultural identity and gangs.“My father took me to the library every Saturday and taught me the importance of life-long learning,” said Barnert, now an assistant professor of pediatrics at theDavid Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “At restaurants, my mother would speak in Spanish to the bus boys about their lives. She taught me how to connect with people and understand the value of their stories.”Both lessons played prominent roles when Barnert, at 25, launched a research project that formed her UC Berkeley public health master ’s thesis — and the basis for her upcoming book, “Reunion,” from University of California Press.Chronicling the lifelong scars left by the military ’s kidnapping of children from their parents during El Salvador’s bloody civil war, Barnert’s insights in the book are of equal relevance today as immigration drives searing new cycles of family separation at America’s borders.From 2005 to 2009, Barnert volunteered with the Salvadoran non-profit,Pro-B úsqueda de los N...
Source: UCLA Newsroom: Health Sciences - Category: Universities & Medical Training Source Type: news