​Muslim activists meet to discuss community health issues

institute of knowledge

As part of a project titled Engaging Muslim Activists for Research on Community Health (E-MARCH), UMMA Clinic of Los Angeles, California, hosted fourteen Muslim community leaders for a 2 day-workshop and a Town Hall meeting. The convening focused on Muslim health disparities and community-based health research.

E-MARCH, led by Aasim Padela, MD, associate professor of medicine and Director of Initiative on Islam and Medicine at the University of Chicago, is funded by the Patient Centered Outcome Research Institute (PCORI) and seeks to engage Muslim community stakeholders in setting health research priorities. Collaborating on the project are UMMA Community Clinic (CA), Whitestone Foundation (MI), and Worry Free Community (IL), each representing stakeholder groups invested in American Muslim health programming. These four institutional partners selected, via a competitive application process, a diverse cohort of 14 members from religious, social services, education, mental health, and clinical backgrounds, and represented twelve different states including Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Virginia. Click here to learn more about the cohort.

Over the weekend of August 4th, 2018, E-MARCH project members met at the Institute of Knowledge located in Diamond Bar, California, to learn new research methods and to discuss patient-centered health research projects for their respective communities. Over the next year and a half, the E-MARCH cohort and the collaborators will work together to develop the knowledge, skills, and networks to effectively engage in Muslim community-relevant patient-centered outcomes research. Additionally, through participation in webinars and facilitated group discussions, they will identify pressing Muslim community health issues and develop strategies and best practices for tackling these issues through data-driven approaches. The project will culminate with a two-and-a-half-day multidisciplinary stakeholder conference at the end of 2019 at UChicago. The conference will include round table discussion on PCOR approaches to combating Muslim health disparities, keynote talks on health programming in faith communities and a skill building workshops on research techniques. Click here to learn more about the project

Health disparities are of particular importance to health insurers and providers as both of these business sectors move into other countries in search of new markets to apply the latest technologies coming of out of research and development within the United States. Meanwhile, waves of refugee and immigrant populations in the last two decades have made it a local priority to take a deeper dive in community health challenges, as U.S. healthcare is tasked to lower per capita healthcare costs. E-MARCH research implications are scalable both locally and globally, as they provide insight into social determinants of health within ethnically diverse populations like the Muslim American community.

About the Project & Initiative: E-MARCH Project is one of the several American Muslim health research and education projects carried out under the auspices of the Initiative on Islam and Medicine (II&M) at University of Chicago. The II&M focuses on improving American Muslim health outcomes through evidence-based, theory-driven health research and education programs. It also convenes multidisciplinary conferences and seminars focused on Islamic bioethics so as to foster open dialogue and exchange of ideas among religious scholars, imams, social scientists and clinicians. Learn more and register for the upcoming conference on Islam and biomedicine.

About the Funder: This project is funded through a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award (EAIN-5990)

PCORI is an independent, non-profit organization authorized by Congress in 2010 to fund comparative effectiveness research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence needed to make better-informed health and healthcare decisions.

About the Project Collaborators:

Initiative on Islam and Medicine at the University of Chicago, UMMA Community Clinic, Whitestone Foundation, and Worry Free Community

Padela Aasim, MD portrait

Aasim Padela, MD

Aasim I. Padela, MD, MSc, FACEP, is Director of the Initiative on Islam and Medicine and Associate Professor in the Section of Emergency Medicine at the University of Chicago.

Learn more about Dr. Padela