Dr. Baharak Tabarsi, a physician at Valleywise Health in Phoenix, is uniquely prepared to care for Afghan refugees being resettled in the Valley: she was once one of them.
Tabarsi and her family fled Iran in the mid-1980s due to religious persecution for practicing the Baha’i faith. After some time spent in refugee camps, they finally arrived in the U.S. when she was 10. That shared dramatic experience, and the fact that Tabarsi speaks Farsi, similar to the Dari many Afghans speak, allows her to connect with her patients on a deeper level.
“It can be very anxiety provoking when you don’t know what’s going on or why it’s going on and what’s the purpose of having your life be turned upside down, and having to leave the country that you know and the language that you speak,” she said. “I felt kind of called to help in any way with this patient population in particular because of some of the cultural and language similarities.”
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