PHOTO BY MEGAN E. DOHERTY
S C H W E I T Z E R F E L LO W S P R O G R A M
Aasim Padela, MD, director of the Initiative on Islam and Medicine, has published extensively on American Muslim health disparities. He is a University of Chicago Medicine emergency department physician and a faculty member at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics.
Aasim Padela, MD, assistant professor of medicine and director of the Initiative on Islam and Medicine, found that poor screening rates for breast and cervical cancer among Muslim women is, in part, due to factors such as faith-based ways of coping with health and illness as well as discrimination in health care due to religion. He is working to achieve higher screening rates by developing religious messages about caring for one’s health and deploying these messages in educational classes in mosques. In another study, University of Chicago Medicine researchers worked with Catholic churches in Chicago’s Mexican community to identify patients with diabetes “Religion is critical and offer health promotion and prevention classes. to the self-identity “People were very pleased that the program was at of many patients, the church, the class leader was someone from the community and that it was held in a comfortable, and even those who familiar place,” said Arshiya Baig, MD, MPH, assistant aren’t religious may professor of medicine and lead author of the study. have deep spiritual One of SAM’s goals is to help future physicians feel concerns connected comfortable discussing religion and faith with patients. “Especially when suffering, patients may bring up the to their response language of religion, and if the doctor is comfortable, to illness and how it makes the patient more comfortable,” Hussain said. they make medical Natalie Feldman, MS2, said one of the group’s most decisions.” interesting discussions centered on when a patient’s religious views conflict with what is best medically. Daniel P. Sulmasy, MD, PhD “How do you communicate your priorities and also Director, Program on Medicine and Religion understand your patients?” she asked. The University’s nationally recognized Program on Medicine and Religion is one of the reasons Hussain chose Pritzker for his medical education. “Medicine’s interest in the connection between spirituality and health is growing,” said Hussain, who blogs on interfaith issues, religion and medicine for The Huffington Post. “And I hope to continue to be a part of that.”
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Pritzker students awarded fellowships to help improve health in vulnerable communities
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hree second-year Pritzker students — Phillip Hsu, Amol Naik and Katherine Palmer — were recently selected as Schweitzer Fellows for 2015-16. Named after humanitarian Albert Schweitzer, MD, the fellowship program aims to empower young health care professionals to address health disparities and improve health outcomes in vulnerable populations. Through mentored community work and research, the Chicago area fellows program is “dedicated to developing a pipeline of emerging professionals who enter the workforce with the skills and commitment necessary to address unmet health needs.” Hsu is continuing to develop services at a new free health clinic in the Bridgeport neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, home to a rapidly growing population of underserved Asians and Asian Americans. Naik will lead a health discussion group for residents of a facility on the West Side of Chicago that provides safe housing and social services to formerly homeless individuals living with chronic illness. Palmer will lead a group of high school students at the University of Chicago Charter School Woodlawn Campus as they explore health care topics and share what they learn with their school and greater community, ultimately equipping them to become leaders in health care and in health disparities. PHOTO BY REBECCA SILVERMAN
Schweitzer Fellows Phillip Hsu, MS2, left, Katherine Palmer, MS2, and Amol Naik, MS2, are working with community organizations in underserved Chicago communities.
MEDICINE ON THE MIDWAY
FALL 2015
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