State Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, D-Los Angeles, speaks at the Constituent Service Fair she hosted at Holmes Avenue School in South Los Angeles on March 28, 2025. (Photo by Brandon Muth/Cronkite News)
LOS ANGELES – Amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment and contested definitions of who counts as American, one community of immigrants continues the work it began decades ago, confronting one of the most challenging issues for America: access to health care for those who have the least.
UMMA, or the University Muslim Medical Association, was founded by Muslim medical students at UCLA and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science as a free clinic in response to the aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles riots that left more than 50 people dead and 2,300 injured.
“When the founders went into the area around Watts (a neighborhood in South Los Angeles) after the unrest, it was very noticeable that there weren’t enough health centers and services in South Los Angeles,” said Leigh Stenberg, chief strategy officer at UMMA Health.
The clinic, which saw its first patient in 1996, became the first Muslim American organization to receive federal funding to serve underserved communities in 2008.
“I knew (the founders of UMMA Health) from the community, from the mosque,” said Siraj Mowjood, clinician at UMMA Health. “When I was an undergrad at UCLA, I volunteered at the clinic all four years … doing everything from filling medication boxes, cleaning over graffiti, whatever was needed.”
Today, the clinic – originally supported by volunteers and donations from the Muslim community – has grown to five sites across South Los Angeles.
A volunteer with UMMA Health checks an attendee’s glucose levels at the Constituent Service Fair at Holmes Avenue School in South Los Angeles on March 28, 2025. (Photo by Brandon Muth/Cronkite News)
“Based on our Islamic teachings of service and charity … it was very much a feeling of ‘we physicians are doing well and we need to give back to those who are not in the same circumstances,’” Mowjood said. “And as physicians, we have the skillset.”
The South Los Angeles clinic isn’t the only Muslim community-based initiative that emerged to help and heal. Around the same time, Muslim students and community members in Chicago launched IMAN — the Inner-City Muslim Action Network ) — to address the deep-rooted effects of urban poverty and neglect. Iman is also an Arabic word for “faith.”
Both UMMA Health and IMAN are a part of a growing network of Muslim community-based health organizations in the United States, with at least 110 clinics offering free or low-cost medical, dental and mental health services.
These are mostly small, volunteer-run clinics, with more than a third of them located in federally designated medically underserved areas.
As outlined in the 2018 survey that studied how Islamic values, volunteerism and health care priorities intersect in Muslim health clinics, “Muslim community-based health organizations are an integral and growing part of the health safety net for the most vulnerable people in the United States.”
Subsequent research tracked the growth of Muslim health organizations by decade, based on responses from 46 clinics, and found that 2% of those were founded in the 1980s, 4% in the 1990s, 26% in the 2000s and almost 60% in the 2010s.
“They serve fairly diverse communities,” said Gordon Shen, an assistant teaching professor at the University of Texas and the study’s lead researcher. “They’re really trying to match what resources they have and the services that they offer relative to what the community needs.”
Nearly half of the surveyed clinics reported providing services exclusively to patients living near or below the poverty line, as well as the uninsured and underinsured population – a widespread issue before the Affordable Care Act, said Lance Laird, a medical anthropologist and lead researcher of the latter survey.
“These are institutions created by Muslims for everyone else. Sometimes they’ll ‘grow up’ in an immigrant Muslim community (where) new arrivals get connected to the health care system,” Laird said.
Most of the clinics rely on individual private donations and fundraisers to support their work. Others have funding streams that include Muslim groups, other faith-based charities and local foundations. Half of the clinics received funds from state and local governments.
Dental examination with an X-ray machine positioned in front of a person’s mouth. (Photo by Brandon Muth/Cronkite News)
Unlike UMMA, the majority of Muslim community clinics are “not large enough to be qualified as a federally qualified health center … but they do certainly have aspirations to grow,” Shen said.
The health organizations do not brand themselves as religious-based despite their Muslim identity because they are “open to everyone,” according to the more recent study.
The organizations also believe they positively impact public perception of the Muslim community by providing free or affordable health care and challenging negative stereotypes.
However, a few of the clinics reported challenges due to their Muslim affiliation, noting a lack of support from other faith groups, hesitation to volunteer from some non-Muslim and an initial backlash from the surrounding local community.
On March 28, in the front yard of Holmes Avenue Elementary School near the Pueblo Del Rio public housing project in South Los Angeles, UMMA participated in a fair that included access to a free mobile health clinic, grocery giveaways and connections to state, county, and federal representatives who provided casework support.
“There are so many barriers to accessing services for far too many families,” said state Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas, D-Los Angeles, who hosted the event and who represents the 28th Senate District – one of the most diverse parts of Los Angeles. “It could be a language barrier, transportation access, internet and digital divides. It could be trusting agencies enough to want to walk in and know that something bad won’t happen to you.”
Chief Strategy Officer Leigh Stenberg (middle) and other UMMA Health medical staff at the Constituent Service Fair at Holmes Avenue School in South Los Angeles on March 28, 2025. (Photo by Brandon Muth/Cronkite News)
One of the attendees, Natalie Dixon, took a diabetic test, saying that she’s been suspecting diabetes: “It’s helpful for low-income people who haven’t gotten insurance and don’t know if they got diabetes. They probably have headaches or symptoms of diabetes, and they wonder what their glucose is.”
At the fair, Dixon also picked up essentials, such as laundry detergent, metro passes, groceries and toys for her two boys. “A lot of people can’t afford the things they’re offering here. The groceries can be expensive, and some people get only a little bit of food stamps.”
UMMA Health sees several patients with hypertension and diabetes, who could end up in the emergency room if their conditions aren’t properly addressed. Los Angeles County already faces geographic disparities in preventable hospitalizations and ER visits.
“A lot of our patients and a lot of low-income communities have historically had trouble with diabetes just because of the lack of access to fresh foods,” Stenberg said.
Public health goes far beyond health care and hospitals – it’s about creating conditions where people can live healthy lives, from ensuring clean drinking water and enforcing building codes to providing crisis response teams and access to food.
Muslim community-based health organizations are founded, contributed to and operated by immigrants, filling the critical gaps in that system.
“The fact that they (founders and volunteers) were immigrants, or children of immigrants should not be lost, and the fact that they (immigrants) need to give back shows that they are invested in the betterment of our communities in this country,” Mowjood said.
