Meet the team

  Professor Ahmed Okasha  

Professor Ahmed Okasha is the current President of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) and Professor of Psychiatry at Ain Shams University in Cairo. He is also Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Center for Training and Research in Mental Health (Institute of Psychiatry, Ain Shams University) and Chairman of the Ethics' Committee of WPA. He has been awarded the Highest State Prize for Creativity in Medicine (Egypt) in 2000, Fellowships of the Royal College of Physicians  (Edinburgh) and the Royal College of Psychiatrists (London), and was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the American College of Psychiatrists in 2003.

Professor Okasha is the founder of the Institute of Psychiatry at Ain Shams University. He is a past president of the Arab Federation of Psychiatrists and the Egyptian Psychiatric Association, and is currently the president of the Franco-Egyptian Psychiatric Association and the Egyptian Society of Biological Psychiatry, of the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry. He has published more than 250 original articles in national and international journals and is the author of 21 books in the field of psychiatry and psychology in both the Arabic and English languages. He is the founder and Honorary Editor of the Egyptian Journal of Psychiatry, is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Current Psychiatry (Cairo, Egypt), and belongs to the editorial boards of several national and international journals. Professor Okasha's research interests include biological psychiatry, transcultural psychiatry and epidemiology. Director of East Mediterranean regional World Health Organization field trials of ICD-10. A member of APA - DSM-ICD Diagnostic Advisory group  (American Psychiatric Association - Diagnostic & Statistical Manual  and International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems)

Barry D. Weiss, MD

Dr Barry Weiss is Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, and former chairman of the Department of Family Practice at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Dr Weiss is the editor of Family Medicine, national journal of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, and associate editor of the American Academy of Family Physicians' Home Study Monograph program.  He is the author of over 100 journal articles and book chapters, and series editor of McGraw-Hill's 20 Common Problems textbooks, which includes Dr Weiss's texts on 20 Common Problems in Primary Care and 20 Common Surgical Problems and Procedures in Primary Care.  Dr Weiss is also deputy editor of Micromedex's Best Practices of Medicine on-line medical database.

Dr Weiss's research interests have centered on patient-physician communication, with an emphasis on the health literacy - the ability of patients to read, understand, and use medical information given to them by healthcare professionals.  His work in this area has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and a variety of other books and medical journals.

Dr Weiss is a consultant to the Institute of Medicine's health literacy project.  He has served on the National Cancer Institute's Work Group on Literacy and Cancer, the American Medical Association's Ad-Hoc Committee on Health Literacy for the Council on Scientific Affairs, and the American Medical Association Foundation's task force on health literacy,.  He has also served on commissions and guideline panels for the American Academy of Family Physicians and the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and variety of other national committees.