Partnerships to improve the health of the planet's population

Partnerships to improve the health of the planet’s population Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing. — Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia co-founder The non-profit that administers Wikipedia (the Wikimedia Foundation) is an order of magnitude smaller – in employees [1] [2] and budget – than all other top 10 most-heavily used websites. [3] All Wikipedia articles can be graded for quality using a structured rubric. At the end of 2013, Wikipedia’s medical content was more than 155,000 articles and 1 billion bytes of text across more [4] than 255 languages.

Wikiproject Medicine is an all volunteer workforce of approximately 250 people who seek to ensure that the general public and health care professionals have access to free, current and accurate medical information in their own [5] language, as a text that they can all read, appreciate, and respect. Wikipedia article grading rubric

Wikiproject Medicine rank orders the >25,000 English Wikipedia health-related articles by importance, incorporating both traffic statistics and global burden of [5] disease.





Combining Wikipedia quality and WikiProject Medicine importance rankings provides a map of what has been (and what needs to be) done to improve health-related Wikipedia articles.

Medicine articles ranked by quality and importance



Wikiproject Medicine article importance ranking scheme



By far, this is the most important work I’m doing as a health-professional educator. Our students are moving from digital native consumers of the internet to future health-professional contributors. [9]

Amin Azzam, MD, MA UCSF faculty member [email protected] @AminMDMA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/UCSF



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UCSF “first 28” results 1,084 total edits made Added an average of 12 citations/article + 369,964 bytes added -82,559 bytes removed Net +287,385 byte contribution

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Beginning in 2013, UCSF offered an elective course for 4 year medical students to receive [10] academic credit for improving Wikipedia articles. Between Nov 2013 – Nov 2014, a total of 28 students enrolled. [11] During the months of students’ active efforts, their 28 pages were viewed 974,065 times. After students’ contributions until Oct 31, 2015, these 28 pages were viewed > 12 million [11] times. During the same timeframe, when including a best estimate of mobile views, the 28 pages [11] were viewed > 22 million times. Between Dec 2014 – April 2016, an additional 22 students completed the course, including th 4 year students visiting from other medical schools. Beginning in 2014, the UCSF School of Pharmacy incorporated Wikipedia editing assignments as well.

The Wiki Education Foundation serves as the bridge between academia and Wikipedia. Since 2010, over 14,000 students across 640 university courses in more than 400 [13] universities have contributed 20.5 million words to over 35,000 Wikipedia articles.

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As of March 2016, Translators Without Borders (TWB) has donated >30 million translated words. [7] TWB partners with Wikiproject Medicine and also with efforts at UCSF. As of fall 2015, TWB and other partners have facilitated more than 1,300 translations and are [8] working in around 100 languages. Wikipedia Zero is an initiative to provide access to Wikipedia for free in developing [14] countries. As of March 2016, Wikipedia Zero provides free Wikipedia access to over 600 million people [14] in 64 countries though 82 mobile carriers. References 1. http://www.alexa.com/topsites 2. https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/2014-2015_Annual_Plan_ Questions_and_Answers 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/ Assessment 4. Heilman JM, West AG. Wikipedia and Medicine: Quantifying Readership, Editors, and the Significance of Natural Language. J Med Internet Res 2015;17(3):e62; URL: http://www.jmir.org/2015/3/e62 ; DOI: 10.2196/jmir.4069; PMID: 25739399; PMCID: 4376174 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine 6. http://translatorswithoutborders.org/ 7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/ Translation_task_force



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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/ Translation_task_force https://medium.com/@DorothyR_Howard/10-wikipedianspartnering-with-medical-organizations-to-improve-onlinehealth-information-a7707a72b7d3 http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/09/109201/ucsf-first-usmedical-school-offer-credit-wikipedia-articles Azzam A, Bresler D, Leon A, Maggio L, Whitaker E, Heilman J, Orlowitz J, Swisher V, Rasberry L, Otoide K, Trotter F, Ross W, McCue J. Why medical schools should embrace Wikipedia: Analysis of final-year medical student contributions to Wikipedia articles for academic credit at one school. Open access manuscript under review at a peer-reviewed journal. http://wikiedu.org/ http://wikiedu.org/changing/classrooms/ https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero

“Partnerships to improve the health of the planet’s population” by Amin Azzam, MD, MA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.