Dr. Amin Azzam is a psychiatrist who specializes in group psychotherapy for patients living with chronic medical conditions.
In his research, Azzam studies the efficacy of various instructional approaches for educating health care professionals, looking at how students acquire, retain and apply the knowledge they need for working with patients.
In addition, Azzam created the world's first elective course in which medical students receive academic credit for improving health-related information on Wikipedia. He is proud to have launched a global movement to embrace Wikipedia editing as an effective teaching and learning strategy in the schooling of health professionals: As of June 2024, 2,700 students in 176 courses have improved 1,860 Wikipedia articles related to human medicine and wellness. He continues to promote Wikipedia editing as a tool to fight misinformation and provide free high-quality health information to the public.
Azzam earned his medical degree from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine. He completed a residency in adult psychiatry at UCSF. He has a master’s degree in education from the University of California, Berkeley. A teacher at UCSF, UC Berkeley School of Public Health and Samuel Merritt University, he is passionate about finding ways to improve medical education, including using new technologies that help learners become the kind of health professionals patients want and need. He also serves as a consultant to several health education technology companies.
