Courtesy of Mawadda
Mawadda
As respiratory therapists, community members, advocates, and entrepreneurs, Firaoli Adam and Yasmin Samatar are healers, going into healthcare with the purpose of helping people. But as first-generation, Black Muslim women, they know it’s not easy, especially when the lack of culturally appropriate PPE causes frustration and loss of productivity.
For the students in St. Kate’s respiratory care program, finding a middle ground between learning and advocating for themselves was a careful balancing act. That pressure was made worse by the lack of appropriate PPE. Adams and Samatar recall learning the NICU rotation as students and having to wear scrubs that came as a shirt and pants set.
“It was my first time wearing pants outside,” Samatar says. “I felt like I was naked, I was so uncomfortable.”
Their learning experience was often plagued with worries, from feeling like an exposed hijab was bringing infection in the OR room to being so focused on their garments that it distracted from learning. They learned to make due, wearing oversized shirts to cover exposed wrists or fashioning makeshift skirts with scrub sweaters and consulted amongst themselves and other hijabis on better ways to tuck in their hijabs.
Being on the frontlines during the COVID pandemic only brought more problems to light. They took their experience in school to the field and began to advocate for their patients as well. They offered to act as translators for Somali or Oromo patients.
“That’s when we started our journey to the business side of healthcare where we get a seat at the table and bring in ideas to help bridge that cultural inclusivity gap in the system,” Samatar says. “Learning how to be comfortable in your own skin and identity makes you realize your advocacy goes beyond you, it goes to your patients.”
On top of taking on more roles, they felt they weren’t being taken care of by the hospitals who provided disposable PPE—from gowns, gloves, and shoe covers—but were left wearing the same hijab for shifts that ran over 12 hours. They would try to mitigate that by bringing in extra hijabs and being more careful when going home to their families, but it brought such an emotional cost that Samatar hopped around hotels and Airbnbs for three months during the pandemic.
In the winter of 2021, they took it upon themselves to create Mawadda, with the first line of FDA-compliant, disposable isolation garments catered towards Muslim women after discovering a beard cover offered at a hospital. Their pilot project, the Hygienic Hijab, was launched in late 2022.
To make sure their product met both FDA protocol and hijabi standards, they worked with a local designer and a manufacturer that made face masks for the Biden Administration during the height of the pandemic. That meant finding, or in their case, creating a material that’s thick enough to cover their hair and neck without being see-through, and still be thin and breathable enough to be able to perform surgery for several hours or be secure enough to perform CPR without worrying about it shifting or falling off. They invited healthcare workers to try them out and held focus groups for feedback.
“It took a bit of time because we weren’t trying to rush it, we were trying to have an actual one-size-fits-all product that’s functional for everyone,” Adam says. They ended up with a special spunbond fiber that breathes and drapes easily.
Adam and Samatar say it shouldn’t be a worker or a patient's responsibility to advocate for themselves, they have enough on their mind. So they devised Mawadda’s products to fill three main tenants: infection prevention, cultural inclusivity, and patient/healthcare worker satisfaction in the hospitals. And it all goes together, “by bringing in cultural inclusivity you're able to target a new side of infection prevention, which kind of ties in to patients being a lot more satisfied and returning to hospitals because they feel their needs are met. Which leads healthcare workers to feel like their presence is valued in this hospital so it boosts confidence and increases retention,” Samatar says.
Wearers say it’s been life changing, and Mawadda wants to keep the change coming. There is a whole line of scrubs in the works, including a skirt that is eagerly anticipated.
Mawadda is open to procurements for hospitals, but the process of getting inclusive PPE to all hospitals is timely and people just can’t wait anymore, so they’re selling it online for patients or healthcare workers that may need it urgently.
“We want to make sure it’s presented to them the same way everything else is available to them. They shouldn’t be purchasing it out of pocket and bringing it in, especially as a patient, how will you even know when you need this product,” Adam says.
Adam says the whole point is for the next generation to not have to encounter these worries, to feel free to focus on what they’re meant to do: save a patient’s life.
