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Researchers Going Global to Improve Arab Health
When Adnan Hammad started working on programs to improve the health of Arab Americans in the mid-1990s, he lacked important information such as the rates of cancer, diabetes within that community, or the prevalence of post-traumatic stress among refugees.
Answers gradually emerged as he and other health experts and officials worldwide dove into research and shared their data.
“Arab Americans share a cultural and linguistic heritage with the Arab world as well as common risk factors and disease patterns tied to their Arab ancestry,” said Hammad, who founded and directs the Community Health and Research Center at Dearborn-based ACCESS, formerly known as the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services.
“When Arab populations settle in areas such as the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe, they experience socio-economic transformation, changes in lifestyle and educational achievement that leads to a change in the prevalence of disease and health behaviors. These experiences are very important for health and academic agencies to know so they can develop more efficient programs and services for Arab-Americans and other minority groups.”
Hammad said he and his colleagues in and around the Detroit suburb with one of the largest Arab communities in the United States have made “big strides” in learning about diabetes among people of Arabic ancestry, finding in a 2003 study that the community has a rate three times that of the rest of the nation and higher than other minority groups. Progress also has been made in screening many Arab American women for breast cancer, and cancer is being detected at much earlier stages.
One of the challenges to filling the knowledge gaps is that U.S. Arabs are not considered a minority when it comes to health care, so information about them isn’t registered when they go to the hospital. Hammad said he and others have assumed the responsibility, gathering research from outside the region and even the country.
The vehicle for their work has been the International Conference on Health Issues in Arab Communities, mainly held on alternating years since 1999. The 6th annual event planned for October in Dearborn was originally supposed to be held last year in Aleppo, Syria.
“I hope that this intervention — this conference — would actually be also used as an advocacy strategy for (U.S.) policymakers — that they would consider Arab Americans to be a minority, at least when it comes to their health status,” Hammad said.
Past conferences have spurred numerous community health programs or projects, and the proceedings have been published in the Ethnicities and Disease Journal.
This year’s conference, which is expected to include participants from 29 countries, is focusing on broadening its scope. For instance, two symposia serve as bookends to the conference: one on the mental health of refugees and immigrants and the other on global health issues. Another highlight, he said, will be researchers from American University in Beirut unveiling their study on the effects on public health among Arabs worldwide from the uprisings and protests that have been part of the so-called Arab Spring.
“Global health is becoming a fact — it is no longer a dream,” Hammad said. “Every person who really wants to impact his community when it comes to good health … needs to be open to working globally.”
Jeff Karoub
Detroit News