MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Milwaukee’s Muslim Community and Health Center (MCHC) prides itself on the wealth of resources it provides. Since 2004, it has strived to reach underserved communities in need.

What You Need To Know

  • Lawmakers can request special appropriations for projects in their districts
  • Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee is requesting $290,000 for the Muslim Community and Health Center (MCHC) in her district

  • Rep. Moore says the money would "expand [MCHC's] ability to provide culturally competent mental health care to more in our community"

 

“We’re actually in a location where there are many immigrants, many refugees, many people from various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds,” Salma Akhter, an administrative assistant at MCHC said. “Many people when they come to the facility, they enjoy seeing a familiar face, a familiar culture. Just to see someone who looks a little bit like them—that, in essence, just makes them feel comfortable once they come in.”

MCHC’s reach was realized last year when U.S. troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan in August 2021. The abrupt pull out saw some 13,000 refugees housed at Wisconsin’s Fort McCoy army base before being resettled throughout the state and across the country. Staff at MCHC say they wanted to help incoming families adjust to their new lives.

“We can understand them, their ethnic background, where they come from and also what social changes in dynamics they have to face so they do feel comfortable,” Tahseena Tahir, a medical office secretary at MCHC said.

The center has seen more than 50 afghan evacuee families since August, providing with resources like childcare, and behavioral healthcare services. It also puts a strong emphasis on mental help support.

“They just do not need only the health benefits and health needs, they need catering to their psychological, physical, emotional, that trauma that they have left behind,” Tahir said. “I think MCHC is a great opportunity to do that. Even when the pandemic was in effect, and prior to that, we were doing that.”

The center’s work hasn’t gone unnoticed. Rep. Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee is looking to help with it’s continued efforts. She sent a $290,000 earmarks request to the House Appropriations Committee to help boost the center’s mental health programs.

“We need to ensure our new friends and neighbors have the resources, including mental health support, to not only adjust, but flourish in their new communities,” she wrote in part in a statement to Spectrum News.

Akhter says that investment will help the center expand its work to making the state’s new neighbors feel at home.

“That funding would help us provide additional counselors perhaps additional timings for patients to come in,” she said. “And perhaps it would pave a way to expand our behavioral health clinic as well.”