Fostering a passion for civic responsibility
By Alexandra Burza, MMJC '19
Maher Alazzam, Dentistry Class of 2021, has long been drawn to the idea of creating community.
Alazzam immigrated to Canada with his father as a child, settling in St. Catharines. As a teen, he knew he wanted to pursue a career in health and help others, but felt pulled in many directions.
“I asked to shadow health professionals in my city. I shadowed my dentist, and many aspects of the job really appealed to me,” Alazzam recalled. “It was always new stuff, you got to use your hands. But most importantly, his office was like a small community. His staff were like his friends, and the work seemed really collegial.”
Still years away from dental school at the time, his passion for health and community engagement were invested in his work with the Niagara Region Public Health Unit as a youth advocacy leader consulting with the unit about teen health education initiatives.
“I started volunteering because as an immigrant, there’s been a lot of opportunities presented to me to improve my life and keep growing. I wanted to invest the energy and give back the luck I’ve had in my life,” he said.
“Volunteering also opens you up to other people’s stories and other cultures,” he added.
When he enrolled at Western University for his undergraduate degree in medical sciences, Alazzam quickly started looking for opportunities to get involved. In his first year, he played violin in an ensemble for seniors in the community. Eventually, he became involved with the University Student Council as the Health Promotions Coordinator, leading on-campus events and initiatives in sexual health and consent education, mental health and more.
“I learned a lot about the importance of health promotion and communicating with people about their health. In this role, I saw that sometimes students didn’t understand what’s happening in their own bodies. Now that I’m with patients in the clinic, I see similar situations, and it’s really beneficial to apply that skill set to oral health,” he explained.
Alazzam said he was thrilled to attend dental school at Schulich Medicine & Dentistry for the opportunity to learn in a close-knit class environment and to deepen his roots in London.
“In professional school, the competitiveness among students is not there as much as in undergraduate studies; you’re not studying to get into grad school, you’re studying for your patients. At Schulich Dentistry, the class size is also smaller, so you build meaningful connections.”
Although he says he initially planned to take a step away from volunteering to focus on studies in dental school, it was this connection to his classmates which encouraged him to take on the role of Vice President of Student Issues in the UWO Dental Students’ Society.
In this role, he leads a committee of student leaders and administrators to identify, address and plan to resolve various student issues and complaints. Alazzam said the role has taught him valuable lessons about effective communication and collaboration within a large administrative system.
“If there’s an issue, I want to be a part of fixing it. I would do that either way, but now there is a platform for me to do that, on my peers’ behalf,” he shared. “I want to facilitate opportunities for their voices to be heard and to make things easier for future students.”
As he inches closer to graduation, Alazzam looks forward to continuing his passion for community service back in St. Catharines. He plans to volunteer with a small mobile dental clinic providing free, needs-based care in the Niagara region, and hopes to one day own his own community practice, and assist others with their oral health and overall well-being.
“Dentistry is really segregated from medicine, in terms of public access. In Canada, access to dentistry is a privilege due to the cost. I feel privileged to be where I am and I want to use that gratitude to help people,” he said.
