By: Javacia Harris Bowser

Albert Schweitzer Fellow Sarika Mullapudi learned to knit just before she began medical school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Knitting quickly became one of her favorite hobbies. She loved knitting so much that she began to look for ways she could use knitting to be of service to others. Through the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship and with the help of UAB’s Arts in Medicine program, Sarika is finally getting her chance.

Working with UAB’s Arts in Medicine program, Sarika has created a weekly knitting program for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers. Since the end of July 2023, Sarika has been meeting with oncology patients and their families giving them a space to use knitting as a form of self-expression.

“We even have some people who drive an hour each week just to get to be there,” Sarika says. “I think it’s a distraction, but a good one.”

She hopes that the knitting class gives oncology patients and caregivers something to look forward to each week, something that has nothing to do with cancer.

There are tangible benefits too. Chemotherapy can cause neuropathy and a decrease in fine motor dexterity in some patients.

“An activity like knitting and moving your fingers can also help improve that as well,” Sarika says.

Sarika’s project was inspired by Blazing Hooks and Needles, a group that met weekly — before COVID — at UAB to knit and crochet together. Founded by Yolanda Hogeland and Martha Griffin, the group consisted of volunteer crochet and knitting teachers from a wide variety of UAB staff who taught parents with children in the Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to create blankets, hats, and washcloths for their new babies.

“There’s not much that they could control, but they could control what they were working on,” Sarika says. “It was giving them a sense of control and an outlet.”

And she wanted to do the same for oncology patients.

Sarika aims to help decrease symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression while also giving patients a sense of control and community as they gather with others who can relate to their survivorship and caregiving journeys. 

Knitting the Future

Sarika wants the knitting group to grow and continue long after her Fellowship project is over.  

“There’s a lot of community buy-in at this point,” Sarika says, adding that she gets frequent emails from people who want to donate needles or yarn.

Sarika hopes the knitting group will become an ongoing class offered by UAB’s Arts in Medicine program and that other medical school students will volunteer to help.

As she looks to the future, Sarika can already see how this project is helping to shape the kind of doctor she will one day become.

First, the project taught her the importance of being flexible. Initially, Sarika wanted to start a group for hospitalized cancer patients.

“Logistically that didn’t really work out, so then I had to pivot and figure out how to make this work in an outpatient space,” she says. Then she had to make sure the classes were fun!

“All of that required flexibility to make sure that I was meeting the patients where they were, rather than just assuming what would be best for the group,” she says.

Most of all, this project is teaching Sarika the importance of listening.

“It gives me a lot of skills with learning how to better connect with patients because every week, for two to three hours, I’m just talking to patients and getting to hear them, getting to hear their perspectives about both medicine and their healthcare journeys, but also just things outside of medicine,” Sarika says.  “They always share little tidbits about what they really liked about their doctors or what they really didn’t like. And that’s something that I get to keep in mind along the way to help myself in the future, so I can be a doctor that people like.”

Learn more about UAB’s Arts in Medicine program here.