Coordinating with Attorneys to Advance Care for Immigrant Patients: Understanding the Policy & Legal Contexts

Kelly L. Edyburn, Ph.D. (they/elle) is a bilingual (Spanish/English) child and community psychologist and an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Edyburn is part of the mental health team at Youth UpRising/Castlemont Health Center, a UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital
Oakland school-based clinic in Oakland, California, where they primarily serve newcomer immigrant youth and their families. Dr. Edyburn earned their Ph.D. in Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and has previously worked as a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in early childhood research and policy at the Children’s Equity Project and Arizona State University, a Clinical Psychology Postdoctoral Fellow in immigrant youth mental health at the University of California, San Francisco and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, an Assistant Professor in the School Psychology program at Loyola University Chicago, and a Senior Researcher at Education Northwest. Dr. Edyburn’s research and clinical work center on the (1) implementation of school- and community-based interventions that support newcomer immigrant youth mental health, (2) culturally and linguistically responsive care for children and youth with developmental trauma, and (3) capacity-building and policy change to address social determinants of health and promote equity in child and adolescent mental health. Through their collaboration with
the Children’s Equity Project and ImmHELP, Dr. Edyburn also engages in policy work, advocacy, and training focused on improving trauma-responsive care for unaccompanied and asylum-seeking children in federal immigration custody and in immigration proceedings.

Maria Jimenez-Salazar (she/her/ella) is a child and adolescent psychologist and Postdoctoral Psychology Fellow in the Multicultural Clinical Training Program at the University of California, San Francisco, where she is training in the implementation of evidence-based practices with immigrant youth and families. Maria earned her PhD in Clinical Psychology from Fordham University, where she pursued major areas of study in child and adolescent psychology and forensic psychology. Maria focused her dissertation on identifying risk and protective factors of mental health in the migration process of unaccompanied immigrant children from Central America. A first-generation Ecuadorean immigrant, Maria looks to meld her lived experience of childhood migration, training in child and adolescent psychology, and research on trauma among justice-involved youth to expand the reach of strengths-based, culturally responsive practices in newcomers’ contexts of reception.