With Support of Islamic Relief USA, IMAN Hires First Medical Director
We would like to welcome Dr. Altaf Kaiseruddin to the IMAN family. He started as the first full-time Medical Director of the IMAN Health Clinic on November 1st. Dr. Kaiseruddin joins IMAN with nearly ten years of experience in the medical profession and with intimate knowledge of the West Englewood and Chicago Lawn communities. With generous support from Islamic Relief USA, Dr. Kaiseruddin is positioned to grow IMAN’s clinic into a first-class facility that is a local stalwart in holistic health and wellness.
The addition of a full-time Medical Director is a milestone in the development of the Clinic as a community health center. Nearly ten years ago, IMAN began laying the foundation for what would become an integral piece of our holistic vision of community service and organizing when we established IMAN’s Free Health Clinic. Initially the Clinic offered health screenings led by a team of medical school students, but it quickly became apparent that more deliberate care and a larger range of services would be required to make a significant community impact.
A partnership with a local physician’s office allowed the Clinic to expand its services throughout the early 2000s before, in 2006, an environmental scan was developed to more accurately predict community needs and to begin identifying a new facility for the growing Clinic. Most recently, the Clinic has grown under the direction of Dr. Adiba Khan, becoming a host site for H1N1 vaccinations and offering pre- and post-natal care for expectant and new mothers among other services.
IMAN’s Free Health Clinic is located in a federally-recognized health care shortage area, with an abysmally high number of uninsured individuals. Dr. Kaiseruddin has joined the Clinic with a commitment to expand its ability to provide comprehensive care to all those in need. His lifelong desire to help the underserved, a passion informed by his faith in Islam and its mandate to serve God’s creation, made joining IMAN “just seem natural.” Moreover, he hopes to motivate other Muslim health care workers to integrate their professional lives with community service, by volunteering time with the Clinic. His reasoning? The statistics of hunger, disease, and death by violence are just as staggering in areas of the inner-city as in some areas of active war; an issue that deserves our immediate attention.
These statistics represent a stark reality that Islamic Relief USA acknowledged and is helping to change by embarking on a partnership with IMAN, supporting the work of Dr. Kaiseruddin and the growth of the clinic. Dr. Kaiseruddin shared that Islamic Relief is “a beloved organization within the Muslim community and to me specifically” and that the recent partnership with IMAN is proof of a critically needed dedication to domestic emergencies. The resources of Islamic Relief will undoubtedly make a significant contribution to the scope and quality of the Health Clinic’s work moving forward.
IMAN is excited about these recent developments and thankful to both Islamic Relief and Dr. Kaiseruddin for their passionate commitment to service and their sincere devotion to positively impacting the lives of our society’s downtrodden. This new relationship should allow IMAN to, in Dr. Kaiseruddin’s words, “provide the best healthcare experience to each and every person who enters.”