COMMUNITY MATTERS
Washington State Senate Confirms Umair Shah as Health Secretary The Washington State Senate voted 48:2 to confirm Umair A. Shah, MD, MPH, as secretary of health on April 23. The vote followed Shah’s testimony before the Senate Committee on Health & Long-Term Care in a confirmation hearing on March 10, and the committee’s subsequent recommendation of his confirmation to the full Senate. Last December, Gov. Inslee appointed Shah to lead the Health Department. Since then, Shah has been responsible for the state’s Covid-19 response and vaccination efforts. Under his leadership, over 40% of the state’s population had received at least one dose of the vaccine and 2 million people had been fully vaccinated by April. Secretary Shah has also championed innovative efforts like the Vaccine Command and Coordination System (VACCS) Center, a unique public-private partnership responsible for launching an improved Vaccine Locator tool that has helped 2 million
Halal on the Menu
Barry Caldwell
Selaedin Maksut
The Atlantic City (N.J.) school district will begin serving halal food five days a week at several elementary schools and the high school, Superintendent Barry Caldwell announced on March 23. “We’ve heard the community,” Caldwell said at the start of the school board meeting. “I think it’s an amazing step forward,” said Selaedin Maksut of the New Jersey CAIR chapter. “I’ve been in communication with officials from Paterson, Jersey City, Prospect Park and other towns across the state that have begun rolling out halal meals for their students, and I think it’s an amazing initiative to see that Atlantic City is doing the same thing.” Maksut thanked school board member Farook Hossain, who, he said, “has worked tirelessly to get this program up and running.” Buffalo (N.Y.) Public Schools, which serves a growing population of about 5,000 Muslim students — out of its student population of about 34,000 — hopes to make
users search quickly and easily for vaccine appointments. Since he took up his position, DOH has steadily improved its transparency as regards vaccination data by launching a new dashboard tab to help people understand where and when vaccinations are being given, how many people are getting vaccinated and the demographic makeup of the vaccinated population. DOH continues to update the dashboard with new metrics regularly. “I am proud of what our state has achieved in the past four months. We are making incredible strides in vaccination, equity, public-private collaboration and more,” Shah said. “We are so close to turning the corner on the pandemic, and there is a bright future ahead of us if we keep working together. We can do so much to improve public health across our state in the Covid-19 response and beyond, and I look forward to tackling those challenges.” ih
Survey Advocates for Muslim American Spiritual Needs in U.S. Hospitals
Thousands of Muslim Americans are overlooked in hospital environments that are not attuned to their religious values and spiritual needs. If you or your loved one have ever had to stay in a hospital, you know how it feels. To help improve this situation with datadriven policy recommendations, the Initiative on Islam and Medicine, along with the Islamic Medical Association of North America, Stanford Medicine, the Khalil Center, The Family & Youth Institute, the Association of Muslim Chaplains and American Health Professionals, have launched a national survey. Please check out https://www.medicineandislam.org/mahsn and lend your voice to this effort. The three-part survey — spiritual needs, experiences of discrimination and sociodemographic questions — takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. Your responses are confidential and unidentifiable. Please try to answer all the questions to ensure our findings’ validity. Survey Link: Is.gd/MAHSN ih halal-certified meals a lunch option in some schools by the fall, reported The Buffalo News on March 10. Will Keresztes, the school district’s chief of intergovernmental affairs, planning and community engagement, told the council’s Education Committee meeting, “We will be offering … a separate halal menu so that parents know exactly what they’re getting every week, and it’s a separate and distinct menu that they can be a part of.” The district can be reimbursed by the
10 ISLAMIC HORIZONS JULY/AUGUST 2021
federal government for the costs of providing specialized meals as part of its regular federal nutrition program. Common Council members Bryan J. Bollman and Mitchell P. Nowakowski, both of whom represent burgeoning Muslim populations in their districts, approached the school district after receiving a letter from Atiqur Rahman, a director of Buffalo Muslim Community Services, about the importance of halal food options in public schools. ih
