Each year, 70,000 children seek refuge from humanitarian threats in Latin American countries and are placed into government custody at American borders. While they come to the United States fleeing violence, extortion, famine, and sexual exploitation, their subsequent experiences within custody of the U.S. government are often characterized by neglect, malnutrition and family separation. Once released from detention, these children face a variety of medical, mental health and legal challenges in a system that oers them limited support.

AltaMed physician, Dr. John Harlow, continuously noticed the negative health eects that these experiences were having on his pediatric patients at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. The need for trauma-informed care to migrant children and their families was clear.

In 2019, Dr. Harlow and the AltaMed Foundation developed La Linterna. Designed to fill in the gaps between the needs of migrant youth patients in Los Angeles and the services available to them, La Linterna provides refugee and immigrant families with:

• primary care
• trauma-focused mental health resources
• immigration legal services
• and holistic case management