这个夏天剩下的时间, Usira 阿里 will work every evening and weekend until she has completed her goal of knocking on hundreds of front doors in Portland's affordable housing communities.
Her mission is to speak to as many women as she can about the kind of gynecological health care they have received in Portland. 不过她会采访所有能采访的人, she hopes to connect in particular with refugee and immigrant women.
作为一个来自索马里的穆斯林长大, 她知道, in some cultures—particularly traditional or devout ones—it is not uncommon for women to consider their medical issues taboo and to be hesitant about seeking care when health problems arise.
阿里 proposed her public health project to the Portland Housing Authority (PHA) last spring. "The supervisor liked that I was passionate about the issue,她说. She then applied for and received a funded internship grant from Bowdoin to work on her health care survey.
阿里, 杰弗里·加拿大学者, moved into a Portland Housing Authority development when her Somali family first arrived in Portland, as many newly arrived immigrants and refugees do. Her family has since moved to another neighborhood.
利用她今年夏天收集的信息, she will help create an informational pamphlet—which will be translated into many languages—to send to all the addresses in the Housing Authority's Portland communities. The mailer will encourage women to seek female health services and it will include information about where they can find affordable care.
除了, 阿里 contacted Greater Portland Health to distribute a questionnaire to its staff asking about their encounters with immigrant women and what they saw as barriers to providing health care. "Health care providers are a vital part of this project,她说. "And I am 100 percent sure they are doing the best they can, 但总会有差距, 文化之间的桥梁."
勘察萨加莫尔村
阿里 times her weekday home visits for after five p.m.当人们下班回家的时候. 在最近的一个微风吹过的晚上, 阿里 walked up the concrete steps to a front door, 宣布, “祝我们好运!" before rapping on her first Sagamore Village house.
Sagamore Village has about 100 families who live in duplexes lining quiet streets. 就在阿里来访的那晚, children's toys were scattered across people's mowed lawns, 有几个人在外面修车.
“我所做的就是敲三下门，”阿里说. If a man or child greets her, she asks whether there are any women in the house she can speak with.
当一个男孩打开门, 他礼貌地听着阿里的话，然后大吼大叫, “嘿, 妈妈, 有人想和你谈谈! 我不知道发生了什么!"
“没什么大不了的，”阿里安慰他说. “我是PHA的, and I'm doing a survey on women's health services they're receiving in the community."
All of the women 阿里 has spoken to so far have been polite and accommodating, 愿意秘密地回答她的问题. 虽然她的很多对话都是用英语进行的, 阿里还会说索马里语和欧洲杯竞猜网址官网, 她用英语分发问卷, 欧洲杯竞猜网址官网, 和法国. Her questions inquire about the last time a woman saw a doctor for female health, 那次访问的质量, 为什么是积极的还是消极的, and whether they asked questions during the clinical visit and how issues were explained to them.
通过面对面地问这些问题, 阿里 is already initiating an unusual conversation for some of the women, helping to accustom them to discussing sensitive subjects. The forthcoming pamphlet will also be written in a way to reassure women that it is important to talk about female-related issues with health care providers, and to encourage female patients to pose questions to their doctors.
阿里 wants to become a gynecologist herself one day, to help forge these important bridges between the medical world and female patients with backgrounds similar to hers. "As a woman of color and as an immigrant in America and someone from a different culture, I know what it feels like to not have health care and to not know about opportunities for care,她说.
