Leslie Ann Horton M.D.D. ’85, Ph.D. ’96

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Dr. Leslie Ann Horton is a rare human being – a practicing primary care physician to the mentally ill whose interest in anthropology has taken her to rural Cameroon , West Africa . Dr. Horton's fieldwork resulted in a dissertation interpreting witchcraft beliefs and activities in terms of both childhood experience and modern change.

As a graduate student, Dr. Horton has contributed as much as she has learned; her professors are quick to praise her as a facilitator in a variety of domains. She was selected to participate in the UC Dickens Project, the first humanities project to be granted University-wide status as University Research Project.

Experiences serving underserved communities – children in Chicago , villagers in West Africa, psychiatric patients in Los Angeles – not only illustrate Dr. Horton's commitment to serving the underserved but also have provided her with a clinical base which cuts across traditional disciplinary categories. Because of her special skills, she has been appointed to serve on the board of directors for several community-based international development organizations such as Parents International Ethiopia and C.H.E.E.R. for Vietnam . Dr. Horton is also a volunteer at the Los Angeles Free Clinic. For years, she has worked with pre-med students to encourage non-traditional students, minorities and those in the social sciences and humanities to pursue a medical career.

Dr. Horton has been awarded full research funding by the Fund for Psychoanalytic Research of the American Psychoanalytic Association – the first anthropologist to be so awarded and was accepted in the Ph.D. program of the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. Dr. Horton has a strong commitment to being a practicing doctor and a healer. This training will help her bridge the gap between medicine and anthropology, to link her desire to practice medicine with her anthropological understanding of the role that family, environment and child care play in adult outcomes.