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A PSC postdoc alumna brings her passion for women’s health in Middle Eastern and South Asian communities back to Dearborn, where her research began.

Angubeen (Angu) Khan, who completed her postdoctoral fellowship at the Population Studies Center (PSC) at U-M Ann Arbor last year, joined PSC’s Summer Coffee Chat with an update on the launch of her career, teaching at UM Dearborn and studying gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health among Middle Eastern and South Asian women. It was a homecoming for Khan, who completed both her bachelor’s degree and Master of Public Health at the University of Michigan and landed in the Dearborn community where her earliest research partnerships took root.

Inspiration and Mentorship

Khan’s research trajectory began in an undergraduate anthropology course on childbirth and culture. “I was always really into women’s health issues, but I’d never seen it from the perspective of an anthropologist sharing a story,” she recalled. A reading on how childbirth experiences differed between Muslim and Hindu women in rural India opened her eyes to how gender and identity shape health outcomes.

That curiosity led her to connect with a researcher during her masters at University of Michigan, Yasmin Kusunoki, with the idea of collecting data to study gender-based violence in Muslim communities. Kusunoki, who is now PSC’s training program director, connected her to community organizations in Dearborn—including ACCESS, which serves a large Arab American population.

“She kind of took a chance on me and just believed in my ideas,” Khan said of her mentor. “That personality fit of a mentor really mattered for me.”

Navigating Data Challenges

Khan trained in demography and has grappled with a persistent challenge: how to study populations that are poorly captured in existing data. Demographers continue to grapple with how to meaningfully categorize Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) populations. These were historically classified as White in the U.S. Census, and available measures like ancestry data are inconsistent. Respondents identify as Arab/Arabic/Other Arab, Chaldean, or Assyrian, Khan said, or they might identify with a country ethnicity, or as mixed, or a category that is uncodable.  

For her dissertation, Khan used country-of-origin data to examine ethnic neighborhood context and health insurance status, arguing that MENA and South Asian communities have heterogeneous experiences that deserve nuanced study. She continues this work using the National Health Interview Survey.

At Home in Dearborn

Now at UM-Dearborn,which recently achieved R2 research status, Khan has found a collegial environment and a campus community that feels like a natural fit. With approximately 30 percent of the student body identifying as Arab American, she teaches students who recognize the organizations she studies and see themselves reflected in her presence.

“I don’t know that I inspire them,” she said modestly, “but I think they at least feel comfortable.”

Beyond the Research

Outside of her research, Khan said that her superpower is finding fun things to do in Michigan, and animal-related activities in particular, including fostering kittens, cat cafes, or goat yoga. 

Her advice to current students and postdocs? Find a mentor who believes in your ideas and gives you agency in your work. And cultivate a life outside the office. “Have a life that nourishes you,” she said, “so that you can be ready and fresh when you’re approaching your work.”

This post was written by PSC Communications Manager Tevah Platt.