Dear all,

WikiProMed Foundation has just wrapped up 2018, and we thought you might appreciate an update with some highlights, so below is a report on: * *Summary of 2018.* * *Upcoming board election -* during February & March 2019! * *Getting involved.*

Yes, it's a bit long (as reports usually are), but if you're passionate about medical content on Wikimedia projects (both on and offline) like we are. We also hope it might inspire more of you to get involved in the coming year.

Wishing all of us a fruitful and joyous 2019,

Shani Evenstein Sigalov Chairperson, WikiProject Medicine Foundation.

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*==What did we achieve in 2018?==* 2018 has been extremely busy - * We continued to *collaborate with like-minded organizations*, like Cochrane, Translators Without Boarders, The World Health Organization (WHO), The International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) and Osmosis, to name a few. * We have continued our *collaborations with Universities *around the world, where Medical students wrote medical-related articles as part of their academic curriculum. * Around *60 new members,* who share our passion to make high-quality medical information available to the world, joined us. * We *participated in conferences* and *published academic peer-reviewed articles in *respected journals. * We have further *developed our Offline Medical Wikipedia App*. * *Internet-in-a-box became smaller and smarter! * We've continued to spread the word about it and send it to various places around the world. * We've been working on *an annual plan for 2019* for the first time. It will soon be released and you'll be invited to help us make it a reality. * And -- *we've applied to become a Thematic Organization https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Project_Med/Application* (instead of a user group).

*To read more about each of these, please check out our 2018 report https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WMMED/Reports/2018.*

*==Board elections == * Today marks the opening of the phase 1 election process of 2019. *Read more about the election and nominate yourselves here.* https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Project_Med/Board/Election_2019

*Below is the timeline for the new board elections: * *Phase 1: 5 board members, till March 2022. * * Feb 3 - March 2 2019 - Nominations * March 11 - March 24 2019 - Voting for 5 seats on the board * March 26 - *Announcement of the 5 new board members. * *Phase 2: 2 board members, till December 2022. * * November 1 - November 30 2019 - Nominations * December 1 - December 15 2019 - Voting * End of December 2019 - *Announcement of the 2 new board members. *

*==Getting involved!==* * If you share our enthusiasm about high-quality medical content in Wikimedia projects in all languages, on and offline, then please register as a member in our organization by *filling out this membership form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1kTiPhjyN1KfTQwkydi-t_c-wb4XO_dHccqBOfsHRRdQ/edit. *

* We have be working on a yearly plan for 2019, but can already say that one of our goals for this coming year is to involve more people from our community, i.e. members of the user group who are not members of the board, in our activities. In other words -- *you don't need to be on the board to be involved*, and we need help from as many people as possible!

We are looking for people who are either interested in getting involved with specific tasks, or have specific skills the board recognized as ones that could be helpful to the advancement of the organization in the coming year.

*Please contact me if you'd like to get involved with - * * Running medical-related educational collaborations * Running medical-related edit-a-thons * Facilitating collaborations with a like-minded organization * Presenting in relevant conferences * Selling Internet-in-a-Box locally * Helping map Wikidata items with Mix'n'match

*Please also contact me if you have one or more of these skills - * * Programming, writing Wiki Tools, Wiki bots or generating statistics of specific pages across different languages. * Fundraising experience. * Accounting experience (preferably in the US)

*That's it for now. Happy 2019, everyone!*

Cheers, Shani. ----------------------------------------------- *Shani Evenstein Sigalov* EdTech Innovation Strategist, NY/American Medical Program, Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University. PhD Candidate, School of Education, Tel Aviv University. Lecturer, Tel Aviv University. Chairperson, WikiProject Medicine Foundation https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Project_Med. Chairperson, Wikipedia & Education User Group https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_%26_Education_User_Group. Chairperson, The Hebrew Literature Digitization Society http://www.israelgives.org/amuta/580428621. Chief Editor, Project Ben-Yehuda http://bybe.benyehuda.org. *+972-525640648*