Isuroon
Report date
February 2021
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Creating the Female Genital Cutting Steering Committee to address the issues experienced by East African women experiencing access and service difficulties with healthcare systems responding to their FGC-related complications.
Considered the best health outcomes for women who have experienced FGC.
• Examined ways of shifting the narrative about FGM in healthcare settings to get more respect, compassionate care, and more culturally competent care for women experiencing FGC.
• Gave attention to both mental and medical health in addressing FGC.
• Prepared to provide ongoing information and outreach.
• Considered responses needed to assist men in being more supportive to FGC women.
• Helped develop 24 survey questions for healthcare professionals.
Considered the best health outcomes for women who have experienced FGC.
• Examined ways of shifting the narrative about FGM in healthcare settings to get more respect, compassionate care, and more culturally competent care for women experiencing FGC.
• Gave attention to both mental and medical health in addressing FGC.
• Prepared to provide ongoing information and outreach.
• Considered responses needed to assist men in being more supportive to FGC women.
• Helped develop 24 survey questions for healthcare professionals.
Key lessons learned
By completing this work, we have been able to increase engagement of the local East African FGC population to advocate and participate in decision making regarding FGC health care and in their own communities. And, we have substantiated our hypothesis that the women themselves know what resources they need to improve their physical and mental health. The women with lived-experience can co-create necessary responses to FGC-related health complications. The healthcare systems should learn from women with FGC experience regarding the resources that best meet the variety of physical and mental health needs.
With physicians and specialists who are often agnostic to sex, gender, or population-specific differences, the collective health system is failing to recognize just how different women’s healthcare is from one-size-fits-all healthcare which appears to be designed in large part by the men who have set existing standards. We’ve learned that the culturally-specific needs of East African women who have experienced FGC are specific and the women themselves have to be included in co-creating healthcare responses designed and decided for them.
With physicians and specialists who are often agnostic to sex, gender, or population-specific differences, the collective health system is failing to recognize just how different women’s healthcare is from one-size-fits-all healthcare which appears to be designed in large part by the men who have set existing standards. We’ve learned that the culturally-specific needs of East African women who have experienced FGC are specific and the women themselves have to be included in co-creating healthcare responses designed and decided for them.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
We identified the need; increased understanding of the issue; and will generate ideas from survey results that will allow us to “test and implement solutions” in the next phase of our work. We believe that Isuroon being a Somali led organization and the Somali staff engagement was instrumental in building the level of trust needed to obtain good information from one-on-one interviews and group discussions with women who have experienced FGC. Somali groups then informed the questions to pose to the medical community and find the areas which need to be improved.
Understanding the problem
When we proposed the project, we were working off limited work we conducted before and community input. This project allowed us the time and resources to 'dig deeper' and explore the nuances of women's needs, emotional effects and the level of their understanding of FGC. As much as timing was unfortunate with COVID, the racial conversation in MN, opened the door for reviewing medical approach to FGC in the light of culture. 'otherness' and gender. That conversation along with the the ideas from surveys that let us know what knowledge and experience healthcare professionals have and the type of resources they need for systems change in the ecosystem to decrease access and service barriers will bring us closer to a breakthrough in addressing a community need.
If you could do it all over again...
As with many other projects, COVID-19 created an obstacle and we do not know that we could have done much about it. It delayed our project and FGC is a tricky subject to pivot to virtual conversations. Our community was overwhelmed with basic needs and it was difficult to focus on FGC under those circumstances. The same with medical community. Still we conducted the group sessions because of our ties to East African culture, but had to make a lot of assurances to support participants feeling comfortable. Our most successful sessions were in-person meetings where we practiced social distancing and wore masks.
Also FGC is a topic that many feel uncomfortable discussing so we spent considerable time developing survey questions in a way that does not blame or shame the healthcare responder for what they know and understand or don’t know and understand.
Overall, considering the circumstances, it is hard to answer this question in a substantial way.
Also FGC is a topic that many feel uncomfortable discussing so we spent considerable time developing survey questions in a way that does not blame or shame the healthcare responder for what they know and understand or don’t know and understand.
Overall, considering the circumstances, it is hard to answer this question in a substantial way.
One last thought
The project was supported by NORA HALL, PH.D. | MANAGING PARTNER
Nora D. Hall has experience in communication, collaboration, management, education, media, program evaluation, organization and leadership development and was the founder of a leadership program that was housed at the University of Minnesota for 11 years. She has served in central administration for a large complex organization, and worked as a department head, division manager, project leader, researcher, evaluator, teacher, and trainer for service agencies, both profit and non-profit. Dr. Hall has published a variety of articles/chapters in scholarly journals, newspapers and five books; and is the recipient of a leadership initiatives award and first place scholars recognition for research she conducted on nineteenth-century journalists.
KAREN GRAY, M.S. | SENIOR PARTNER
Karen D.Gray has extensive experience in the research, design, development and evaluation of projects for a variety of clients. She has years of experience in consulting, planning, evaluation and research for new business development in entrepreneurial and established firms.
Nora D. Hall has experience in communication, collaboration, management, education, media, program evaluation, organization and leadership development and was the founder of a leadership program that was housed at the University of Minnesota for 11 years. She has served in central administration for a large complex organization, and worked as a department head, division manager, project leader, researcher, evaluator, teacher, and trainer for service agencies, both profit and non-profit. Dr. Hall has published a variety of articles/chapters in scholarly journals, newspapers and five books; and is the recipient of a leadership initiatives award and first place scholars recognition for research she conducted on nineteenth-century journalists.
KAREN GRAY, M.S. | SENIOR PARTNER
Karen D.Gray has extensive experience in the research, design, development and evaluation of projects for a variety of clients. She has years of experience in consulting, planning, evaluation and research for new business development in entrepreneurial and established firms.