Samer Wahood

Samer Wahood is a fourth-year medical student at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. A first-generation Syrian-American from the southwest suburbs of Chicago, he graduated from Brown University in 2021 with a BA in Public Policy and is completing a Scholarly Concentration in Biomedical Informatics. His passion for dermatology is rooted in witnessing his late father suffer from unrelenting itch due to bile duct cancer and a deep commitment to health equity, technology, and refugee care.

Samer co-founded Amal Clinic, a student-run free clinic for uninsured immigrants and refugees in Rhode Island, where he built a multilingual interpreter network and recruited physicians across specialties. He serves as Director of Operations for Skin of Color Community, a nonprofit focused on dermatologic education in underserved communities, and is a peer reviewer for the JAAD, JAAD Case Reports, and the International Journal of Dermatology. He is a member of the Rhode Island Hospital Ethics Committee, developing policies and taking calls for ethics consultations throughout the year.

Since becoming the inaugural VisualDx Brand Ambassador for Free Clinics in 2024, he has recruited over 70 volunteers nationwide and helped launch a localization initiative for Arabic-speaking clinicians in Syria. His advocacy sparked collaboration with Syria’s Ministry of Health to align VisualDx with local guidelines. His research spans geospatial access to dermatologic care, AI-assisted patient education, and skin cancer disparities.

On the Student Advisory Board, Samer aims to expand VisualDx’s global reach through equity toolkits, multilingual content, and inclusive diagnostic support for underserved populations.