“Her Story,” Think Medium’s podcast telling stories of female leaders changing the world, dropped its season 4 premiere episode on Wednesday, August 24, with an important discussion on combatting Islamophobia—prejudice against Islam and Muslim people—in medicine, media and society. The episode, hosted by Joanne M. Conroy, MD, CEO and president of Dartmouth Health, features Suzanne Barakat, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Family & Community Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she serves as the executive director of the Health and Human Rights Initiative.
“Dr. Barakat’s story appeals to a wide audience of listeners. Many young women that are interested in starting their careers on the right foot and some experienced women that are just interested about learning about other people’s struggles,” said Conroy, who serves on the advisory council for “Her Story.” “This podcast is a great opportunity for us to interview women leaders and actually share everything they’ve learned with the entire audience.”
As a Muslim, Barakat is no stranger to Islamophobia through tragedies in her own family. Her brother, his wife, and her sister-in-law’s sister were murdered in their North Carolina home by a white supremacist for being Muslim, and two of her relatives were assassinated for their political activism and journalism, presumably by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Neither case received much media attention, and Barakat fought for media coverage and a full investigation.
“I carried the burden of representing a billion Muslims on my shoulders—an unwanted burden,” Barakat told Conroy. “I became this reluctant activist on the side of also still being a trainee. And when I graduated residency, I was doing a mix of my clinical work, full spectrum family medicine with underserved patient populations and refugee health, but also doing this activism work. And so when I joined UCSF, this position as the executive director for the Health and Human Rights Initiative has really allowed the combination of the clinical work with the policy making and the advocacy for human rights violations.”
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About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and largest private employer, serves patients across New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,300 providers in nearly every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Its network of hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and home care facilities, spans a broad geographical area. Year after year, DHMC is named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is consistently recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, northern New England’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of less than than 60 total nationally; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital (Children’s Hospital at DHMC/CHaD) and more than 20 locations around the region; eight member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead, and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Dartmouth Health Home Care; Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth, serving patients as far away as Texas; and more than 30 primary and multi-specialty clinics across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its partnership with Dartmouth College, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the White River Junction VA Medical Center, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials with international impact. Dartmouth Health and its more than 16,000 employees are committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in the communities it serves and to providing every patient with exceptional, state-of-the-art, personalized care. Learn more at dartmouth-health.org.