At the height of the recession, east central Illinois residents saw medical needs growing in their community. And, due to the job market, many residents were without health insurance.
In the spring 2009, a group of Muslim community organizers set out to help address this need. They founded the Avicenna Community Health Center, named after a Latinized version of the name “Ibn Sina,” the father of modern medicine. Sina, a 10th century physicist, astronomer, mathematician and physician, discovered that infectious diseases were contagious. He also introduced quarantine to limit disease spread and started the use of clinical trials.
Avicenna lead founder and president, Irfan Ahmad, is the executive director of the University of Illinois Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology. He saw the university as an obvious partner in this venture, with its many healthcare resources, continuous supply of students seeking experience, and professionals from various fields wanting to help.
Avicenna’s services are available to anyone in the community free of charge, and its mission is to deliver immediate access to health care regardless of religious beliefs. Since its inception, the interfaith center has helped more than 3,000 patients. And while some nonprofit centers receive federal aid, Avicenna survives completely through grants, donations and volunteers.
The center is managed by a board of directors and an executive committee comprised of community members. Staff members include an operations manager who is on payroll, a local doctor who volunteers as medical director and a volunteer clinic manager.
But the foundation of what keeps the clinic functioning is the group of approximately 50 Illinois student volunteers.
Sonya Dave, a junior studying chemistry, said when she came to campus she knew service would be important to her college experience. And when she learned that almost 16,000 people in the community were uninsured or underinsured, it seemed like a natural fit to volunteer for Avicenna. Now, after volunteering for two years on the operations team, she said it has affected her future plans.
“I started out pre-med in college,” said Dave, “and that goal hasn’t changed. But I’ve opened my mind to how many more possibilities there are out there. I’m thinking about working in non-profit clinics in the future. I definitely want to continue serving people in this way.”
Not everyone who volunteers at Avicenna wants to be a doctor. Other students serve on a financial team, a marketing team or a grant-writing team.
“We get students mainly in health care fields,” said Sam Logan, a graduate student pursuing his master’s degree in Nursing at the Urbana-Champaign campus who serves as clinic manager, “but also public health students, social work students and nutrition students.”
Lina Al-Chaar, a senior in microbiology, is currently the operations manager for Avicenna. And even though she is planning to be a dentist, a health service that Avicenna does not provide, she said she has learned many skills that could apply to any career including communication skills, interacting with a range of different people and coordinating administrative logistics.
“There is no major where there isn’t a role for you at Avicenna,” she said. “There are a variety of people who volunteer. We have engineers who manage our online scheduling program, community health majors, biology majors, psychology majors and finance majors.”
In the clinic, patients can access a wellness table where pre-pharmacy students distribute free, over-the-counter medicine like Tylenol and sunscreen. There is also a display about proper diet, organized by nutrition majors.
But regardless of the experience the students gain, they all said the patients are what make volunteering worth it.
“The patients show you how grateful they are,” said Al-Chaar. “They thank you multiple times, and make you feel like you’re making a difference. Seeing them smile is the biggest reward.”
To learn more about the Avicenna Community Health Center, visit their website.
