In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General named loneliness and social isolation a public health epidemic — a statement that surprised many people who don’t typically think of relationships in medical terms. Social isolation, the research increasingly shows, affects longevity and health more powerfully than smoking, exercise, or many of the behaviors we conventionally associate with wellness. And for older adults, the stakes are especially high.
For older Muslims in America, the picture is more complicated still. They are an underrepresented population in religion-and-health research, often left out of the substantial body of work on how faith communities support aging. They are also navigating that aging in a climate where, as one of this week’s guests put it, “being Muslim is very difficult in this country.”
On the Muslim Philanthropy Podcast this week, AMCF Co-Founder Muhi Khwaja sat down with Dr. Kristine Ajrouch, Research Professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, and Dr. Noah Webster, Research Associate Professor at the same institute, to talk about the research they’ve been building together for nearly two decades — and a new project that has the potential to reshape how mosques think about their role in older adults’ well-being.
Who they are
Dr. Ajrouch is a sociologist who grew up in metro Detroit, the daughter of an Iranian immigrant father (a medical doctor) and the granddaughter of Lebanese immigrants on her mother’s side. She earned her undergraduate degree at Wayne State University, her master’s at the University of Michigan, and her PhD back at Wayne State — followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at U-M in aging that, she said, “really changed my life.” She was a full professor at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti before returning to U-M, where she now sits in the Research Center for Group Dynamics at ISR and holds an appointment in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Health Equity at the School of Public Health. Her work has long focused on Muslim Americans, aging, and the social conditions that promote — or undermine — well-being in later life.
Dr. Webster came to Michigan from upstate New York, where he grew up in a small town of 1,600 people in the foothills of the Adirondacks. He started college thinking he’d be a lawyer, switched to sociology in his freshman year on his mother’s advice, and eventually landed at U-M nearly 19 years ago, when his wife began her master’s program in public policy. He started at ISR as a data analyst, completed his postdoctoral training there, and now holds his research faculty appointment in the Survey Research Center — with additional appointments at the School for Environment and Sustainability. His research sits at the intersection of social worlds and built environments: how the places we spend time shape the relationships we keep, and vice versa.
For the better part of two decades, the two have been collaborators.
What they’ve already learned
Their joint work has produced some of the most detailed measures of social relationships in any population-level study of metro Detroit. A 2014 study funded by the Fetzer Foundation collected a regionally representative sample of about 300 people that, importantly, included a sizable subgroup who identified as Muslim — allowing the researchers to compare patterns of social connection across religious affiliations. An earlier study funded by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) was the first in-depth examination of Muslim aging in metro Detroit specifically, conducted in partnership with multiple mosques to identify both needs and strengths within the community. A more recent project examines the social and behavioral aspects of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias among older adults of Arab ancestry alongside Black and white participants in metro Detroit.
The findings have been consistent. Social connection is one of the most powerful predictors of healthy aging, often outpacing health behaviors we more typically associate with longevity. Family is necessary but not sufficient — connection with age-similar peers matters in ways family relationships alone cannot replicate. And the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Webster noted, made many people viscerally aware of what they had taken for granted: when relationships were physically cut off, mental and physical health suffered in ways that surprised even researchers who had spent careers studying the topic.
The next project: mosques as a social health resource
The new project Drs. Ajrouch and Webster have developed builds directly on this foundation. The premise: mosques are an underutilized resource for promoting the social health of older Muslims. Prayer times — especially Friday prayer — already bring people together, but there is substantial capacity for more intentional programming designed to meet older adults’ social needs.
The project has three aims:
- Characterize the prevalence of social isolation and loneliness among older Muslims, using newly available representative data.
- Geolocate older adults’ proximity to mosques and examine the links between proximity and social health outcomes.
- Identify Muslims’ attitudes toward the role of mosques in promoting social connection — what’s working, what isn’t, and what kinds of programs would actually be welcomed.
The researchers plan to partner with multiple mosques to develop and refine social health programs informed by the data. The intention is for those programs to serve as prototypes that other mosques — locally and nationally — can adapt. As Dr. Ajrouch put it: “The only way you can really address people’s needs is through systematic study of those needs, the challenges, and the strengths that communities bring with them.”
That last word is important. This is research designed with communities, not just on them.
Why this matters for the broader community
Older Muslim adults are not invisible to the community — they fill our prayer rows, raise our families, build our institutions. But the research infrastructure that exists to support healthy aging in other religious communities largely doesn’t exist for Muslim communities yet. That’s part of why mosques themselves often don’t have the data, the program models, or the funding pathways to do this work proactively.
A few institutions are already leading. Olive Community Services in Southern California has built a senior services model that is well ahead of where most Muslim community programs sit nationally. The Muslim Community Center (MCC) in Canton, Michigan — Muhi’s home community — has spent decades nurturing intergenerational programming that has carried members through marriage, parenthood, loss, and grandparenthood. The Family and Youth Institute and other research-grounded organizations are building the broader infrastructure. The work Drs. Ajrouch and Webster are doing will give all of these efforts something they currently lack: rigorous, generalizable data.
How to support
The University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research is actively seeking partners to fund and accelerate this work. For AMCF donor-advised fund holders interested in supporting research on Muslim aging and social health, our team can help facilitate a grant — reach out and we’ll walk you through the process.
Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Kristine Ajrouch and Dr. Noah Webster on the Muslim Philanthropy Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
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