New clinic erases culture and language barriers for Somalis
Columbus long has been a leader in resettling Somali immigrants, and a new clinic for those residents’ health care is a welcome leader also.
Language and cultural barriers that create challenges for Somali immigrants with other health-care providers don’t exist in the West Side medical offices opened this week by two certified nurse practitioners and Somali natives who founded Medcare Clinic on West Broad Street.
Demand for the primary-care clinic’s services should be strong in the Columbus area, which is known as being second only to Minneapolis for the local Somali population, estimated at more than 45,000.
Somalis are known to be especially modest — part of their Islamic culture — to the degree that Somali women are likely to decline medical services if their only option is to see a male physician.
Language barriers are also difficult, Ahmed Ahmed, director of the Masjid Ibnu Taymiyah and Islamic Center on the North Side, told Dispatch Reporter JoAnne Viviano. He said even Somali men would hesitate to share a full medical history with doctors if they had to speak through interpreters.
Founders Farhiya Shirwa and Amina Abdule are doing more than meeting an identified need for providing care that is culturally appropriate and without language barriers. They are also showing Somali girls and young women an example of dreams they might be able to achieve in their own lives. Shirwa said it took more than a decade and help from family and friends for the founders to save about $100,000 to invest in their clinic.
The Dispatch applauds the focus and determination Shirwa and Abdule are demonstrating as inspiring role models. not only for fellow Somali immigrants but for all who seek a better life. We wish their clinic great success.
For some, barriers to success are not language and culture but a lack of family support and having to make their own way at a tender age.
Sadly, Ohio is far from leading the nation in offering a good start for being productive adults to children who grow up in foster care, according to a new report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
By age 21, Ohio’s former foster kids are much less likely than the general population and even their peers in other states to have landed a job or obtained a high school diploma, the first-of-itskind report shows. Just 43 percent had a high-school education, compared with 92 percent of Ohioans and 76 percent of those who were in foster care across the nation. Similar disparities were seen among those with full- or parttime jobs for former Ohio foster children compared with the state’s general population and former foster kids in other states.
One bright spot in this picture is that Ohio’s Bridges program, launched in December 2017, has begun allowing those who are aging out of foster care to receive some support services — including help with housing, education, job search and health needs — up to age 21 if they are in school, working or in some type of employment program.
Most young people who land in foster care are not there because of situations for which they were responsible or could change. More must be done to make sure foster care does not become a life sentence of failure.