Morhaf Al Achkar, MD, PhD

Morhaf is a family physician and UW faculty at the Department of Family Medicine. He completed his medical doctorate at Aleppo University in Syria and his residency at Florida Hospital. He has a master's in clinical research and a PhD in research methodology in education from Indiana University. Morhaf's research spans topics like health policy, especially related to pain and opioid prescribing; patient experiences with a focus on lung cancer patients and survivors; and education frameworks of residents to learn reflection, self-assessment, and peer evaluation. He has published peer-reviewed papers in medical research, medical education, and philosophy of research. Morhaf is also an author of a book entitled Road to Meaning and Resilience with Cancer, in which he shares the experience of people living with incurable lung cancer. 

At the family medicine department, Morhaf oversees classroom didactic learning, with a focus on the dialogical framework and experiential learning strategies. He also oversees curricula on research methodology and population health. He is the clinic champion for diabetes care reviews, a clinic initiative in population health that leverages interdisciplinary teams to review and support the care of patients with poorly controlled diabetes. 

Morhaf has joined the AIMS Center because of his interest in the collaborative care model. He was part of a team that explored telepsychiatry as a workforce development model in addition to its role as a care delivery framework. Further, he participated in developing learning modules for primary care providers to enhance readiness and develop competency for collaborative care. Finally, he is working with the team on the Premera initiative on the implementation and evaluation of outcomes.