By: Mira Garin
Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) Heritage Month is celebrated in tandem with the recently established Arab American Heritage Month during the month of April. This time is meant to acknowledge and celebrate the diversity of cultures, languages, religious traditions and ethnicities from this region of the world.
At the age of 12, Salma Iraqi immigrated to the United States from Morocco. While pursuing her Bachelor’s degree in microbiology at SDSU, her interest in public health was piqued when she joined the project Communities Fighting COVID. Throughout the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, she accumulated resources for unique linguistic and ethnic communities across San Diego, which faced unique health disparities including Spanish, Arabic, Tagalog-speaking communities, and she periodically translated resources into her native Arabic. “As an immigrant and having encountered challenges growing up in the U.S., I find [immigrant] populations dear to me,” Salma explained. “If I had the choice to do anything I wanted, I would do more hands-on work with immigrant populations, specifically refugees and asylum seekers.”
Now nearing the completion of her MPH, Salma has continued to focus her work on migrant and minority health through various projects with the Border Infectious Disease Surveillance (BIDS) team at the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), with Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research’s work to improve colorectal cancer screening and follow-up among Latine populations, and her master’s manuscript on examining disaggregated Latine data to investigate disparities in adverse birth outcomes among foreign-born mothers from Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Throughout my educational career, there were a lot of things going on outside of school that I had to manage while dealing with heavy course loads and extracurriculars,” Salma explained. The strong support system of her family, friends, peers, professors, and twin cats Bob and Marley have been a rock throughout her academic journey.
In reflecting on the value of SWANA Heritage Month, Salma emphasized the importance of inclusion and diversity. She celebrated, “finally, the U.S. Census added a category for Middle Eastern and North Africans (MENA)!” This new descriptor is geographically based and aims to help disaggregate race/ethnicity data to better assess and ameliorate health disparities that impact minoritized groups.At the close of SWANA Heritage Month, SDSU’s Center for Intercultural Relations (CIR) will be hosting a soft opening of the renovated and renamed MENA Lounge. The opening will be held in Room 250F of the Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union on Tuesday, April 30 from 2-4 p.m.
