Lesley Barreto

Lesley Barreto (she/her/ella) is a senior in Silliman College pursuing her B.A. in the History of Science, Medicine, and Public Health with a Global Health Studies certificate through the Jackson School of Global Affairs. A proud Peruana from Nueva Yérsi, Lesley was raised between Union City, NJ—one of the most densely populated cities in the nation with the highest percentage of Latino residents in the state—and Paramonga, Perú—the country’s first agro-industrial district and a town of internal migrants predominantly from Ancash. 

Her passion for health policy reform developed organically from witnessing how weak enforcement of occupational safety regulations affected her family of immigrant factory workers. Informed by these experiences, her scholarly interests exist at the confluence of labor, health, and immigration policy. Indeed, her senior thesis explores how W.R. Grace & Co’s industrial paternalism shaped migrant laborers' occupational and broader community health in their Paramonga sugar hacienda (1927-1974). 

Likewise, Lesley’s interest in global health is grounded in a commitment to understanding how transnational conceptualizations of health and prior experiences with healthcare systems in Latin America guide Latino immigrants’ interactions and perceptions of healthcare in the United States. With this focus, she has studied abroad in Buenos Aires for Community Public Health, diving into Argentina’s universal healthcare system in the midst of institutional funding cuts, social determinants of health, and medical Spanish. 

On campus, she’s an NGN Fellow at the Yale Institute for Global Health (YIGH), research assistant for the Hsieh Perú Team, a RITM Undergraduate Fellow, a patient navigator at the HAVEN Free Clinic, the head event coordinator for Latina Women at Yale (LWAY), an EVO teaching assistant at the Peabody Museum, a Yale and You counselor, and a founding member of the Yale Health Student Advisory Council. In her free time, she loves to rewatch Modern Family, drink maracuyá sours with her cousins, listen to chicha/reggae roots en español, and go back home to Jersey.