Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/AMSA - Wikipedia collaboration

There is no formal relationship between Wikipedia and the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). Still, some Wikipedians like AMSA, and some AMSA members like Wikipedia, and perhaps there can be a collaboration between the communities of these organizations.

Philosophy for collaboration

AMSA has policies and campaigns like PharmFree which encourage health care professionals to think critically about how funding can bias perspective and the outcomes to projects. Wikipedia similarly has experienced stress from the pressure of corporate influence, and has extensive conflict of interest policies to protect the Wikipedia community. With AMSA being a major force in organizing medical students and health professionals in the United States, and Wikipedia being a leading student and patient resource everywhere, it might be nice if AMSA and Wikipedia could somehow partner to increase access to health information and do so with minimal influence from commercial interests.

Consumer Reports, a nonprofit consumer organization which promotes access to health information in the United States, might also support such a collaboration, as it also declines to accept corporate funding for any of its projects. Other stakeholders may support this as well, but first some pilot projects and a scope for collaboration should be established.

Ideas for collaboration

AMSA and Wikipedia both operate mostly at the level of individuals. Most reasonable types of collaboration would need to be done at the level of individuals. Here are some ways that Wikipedia and AMSA members could partner:

• An AMSA member arranges for a space at a school, and invites Wikipedians and students to visit. Together everyone talks about online health information.
• Similarly, AMSA members and Wikipedians together could have a health education workshop, perhaps including a tour of online health information or a Wikipedia WP:Editathon
• An AMSA member and a health instructor can call for support in the WP:Wikipedia Education Program and include a Wikipedia project within the syllabus of any class

Interaction history

• AMSA member UseTheCommandLine attends the Wikimania conference in Washington DC in 2012 and proposes a collaboration
• Later in 2012 Reshmagar at AMSA proposes a collaboration in which AMSA information could be made more available to the Wikipedia community.
• AMSA conference 2014 - AminMDMA, bluerasberry, and Fred Trotter attend AMSA conference and propose collaboration. AminMDMA is a physician now but was an AMSA member as a medical student.
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/AMSA - Wikipedia collaboration/AMSA wiki class - January 2016
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/AMSA - Wikipedia collaboration/AMSA wiki webinar - May 2016

About the Wikipedia Education Program

"Editing Wikipedia articles on medicine", a classroom handout

The Wikipedia Education Program is a project to connect students and the Wikipedia community to share information together through Wikipedia. Background information is available at Wikipedia:Education program.

Partnerships with medical schools are important because Wikipedia has substantial coverage of the majority of medical topics. Wikipedia medical articles are highly trafficked: over 25,000 medicine articles receive almost 200 million views per month and nearly 8,000 pharmacology articles receive over 40 million views per month as shown at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Popular pages. Research supports Wikipedia's increasingly influential role as the dominant online reference in delivering medical information to the lay public—as well as being a frequently consulted resource for medical professionals. The Wikipedia article "Health information on Wikipedia" summarizes this, and for more information, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Research publications for a list of academic studies of Wikipedia's health content.