Post-Projects for Peace: Narjis Nusaibah ’26 reflects on her nonprofit Alo Health and its impact

Earlier this year, Narjis Nusaibah ’26 received Projects for Peace grant funding for breast cancer screenings in Bangladesh. What did Nusaibah do with that funding? She got busy!

“I started a nonprofit named Alo Health with the Projects for Peace fellowship,” Nusaibah said. “We run workplace screenings, diagnostic camps, and remote clinics; teach breast self-exams; act as primary providers for suspected cases; and run a research stream to collect the data we need to improve and scale our work. As of now, we have taught around 5,000 women how to do breast self-exams, clinically screened 400 women, and have identified 28 suspected cases.”

Alo Health was created out of Nusaibah’s desire to focus on breast cancer in Bangladesh, where she could maximize the use of limited resources and still have a tangible effect on women’s health. Her childhood experiences with women’s health in Bangladesh also influenced her decision to work there.

“I had a really good childhood,” Nusaibah explained, “and perhaps that’s exactly why I was privileged enough to realize when things weren’t normal. For example, topics related to women’s health were shrouded in shame. I was never taught what periods were, and when I experienced delayed cycles as a teenager and expressed concerns about my health, I was told to stay quiet because it was ‘embarrassing’ and ‘it will fix itself.’ Just menstruating made me really uncomfortable as a teenager. It didn’t make sense that even with access to doctors and education, something as normal as this was treated like a secret. That experience stuck with me and shaped the kind of problem I wanted to work on.”

That problem would have turned out to be massive, almost impossible, in scope, had Nusaibah not been familiar with the location. For three years, she spent her Carleton breaks in Bangladesh meeting with doctors, non-governmental organizations, and local healthcare partners to establish the groundwork before creating Alo Health. There was also the large-scale cultural challenge.

“I was very aware of the cultural implications of working with such a stigmatized topic,” Nusaibah said, “and I felt confident I could navigate that with the sensitivity it required.”

Since the initial proposal, Nusaibah adapted Alo Health’s approach to better address healthcare by switching from large, public information talks to smaller sessions for women only, to large success.

“We saw a huge difference after switching to smaller sessions,” Nusaibah said. “Women were much more open to sharing their concerns — like if they suspected a lump or noticed changes — and they were also much more comfortable answering our questions or just asking their own. Privacy in healthcare is a big privilege in Bangladesh, which is kind of sad when you think about it. One-on-one sessions weren’t logistically possible for us, but creating smaller spaces helped us get as close to that sense of privacy as we could. Finding the right balance between efficiency and privacy is still a work in progress, but I’m really happy with how far we’ve come.”

Another change has been adding a research and data-collection aspect to Alo Health, focusing on screening results, working conditions, childbirth practices, financial autonomy, and reproductive health among ready-made garment workers. Nusaibah plans to use this data to gear Alo Health up for future projects.

“Data is going to play a big part,” Nusaibah explained. “For example, one of the key things we’ve been tracking is vaccine awareness, especially around the HPV vaccine. Right now, 99.2 percent of the women in our sample haven’t received it, even though it can reduce the risk of cervical cancer by about 87 to 90 percent. That’s a huge gap, and it really helps us see where to focus next.”

After that, Alo Health’s next goal is to provide that vaccine for free or at a subsidized rate. Nusaibah remains optimistic about acquiring the funding and materials to achieve this goal, but also wanted to use this article as a chance to reach out.

“If you are reading this, and you happen to have a lead or just an idea, I would love to chat,” Nusaibah said. You can reach her at nusaibahn@carleton.edu.

Despite Nusaibah returning to Carleton for her senior year after doing all this work, she still has plans for Alo Health. Her team is continuing running the organization even when she’s not there.

“From the beginning, I knew I wanted this organization to be bigger than just me,” Nusaibah said. “Nothing worth doing can really be done alone, and I’ve been lucky to have people who care about this just as much as I do!”

“We still have weekly meetings to brainstorm, troubleshoot, and plan the next steps,” Nusaibah said, “which unfortunately for my sleep schedule, happens to be around 3 a.m. here because of the time zone difference. Long-term, I want Alo Health to be a stable local organization that provides important services free of cost, and I hope it continues to grow even after I’ve moved on to the next stage of my own journey in healthcare.”

Now that she’s had a moment to reflect on her experience, Nusaibah has found new determination to keep tackling challenges in women’s health.

“Big, scary problems usually have pretty simple and straightforward solutions,” she said. “Not everything worth doing needs to be incredibly sophisticated or complicated. It wasn’t a big epiphany — it was more, ‘this matters, and I want to keep doing it.’ That’s really all it is. Honestly, how lucky am I to have figured out what feels meaningful to me while still in college?”