Children’s Minnesota kid expert Shukri Jumale has been selected as a 2024 Notable Emerging Leader by Twin Cities Business magazine. Shukri is program manager of the Midwest Fetal Care Center (MWFCC), a collaboration between Allina Health and Children’s Minnesota. Notable Emerging Leaders are professionals who effect change, share expertise and exhibit leadership in initiatives that create significant, positive and measurable results.
Shukri is being recognized for her role in MWFCC’s fetal equity project, which aims to ensure all communities have access to the expert care MWFCC provides unborn babies with complex medical conditions.
In 2023, Shukri and team convened focus groups with Somali American women to learn why few were seeking advanced maternal fetal care. Among other barriers, the focus groups revealed that many women believed their religion forbade surgical and medical intervention for fetuses. Shukri helped engage Islamic scholars to weigh in on the issue. The scholars agreed: parents can accept surgical and medical intervention to save and improve the lives of their fetus, in fact the Quran states they must. Shukri and her colleagues are now working on a publication to share this information locally and nationally.
Shukri also helped address the hesitancy of some Muslim women to accept donor breast milk for their babies. She helped assemble a collaborative team of Islamic scholars and medical experts to discuss the issue and procured funding for the project to succeed. The scholars have issued a fatwa, the first of its kind in the country, supporting the use of pasteurized donor breast milk as beneficial to babies.
See the complete list of this year’s Notable Emerging Leaders in the February/March issue of Twin Cities Business magazine.
