Rania Awaad, MD, is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the Stanford University School of Medicine where she is the chief of the Diversity Section, director of the Diversity Clinic, and the director of the Muslim Mental Health Lab (Awaad Lab). She pursued her psychiatric residency training at Stanford where she also completed a postdoctoral clinical research fellowship with the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Her research and clinical work are focused on the mental health needs of Muslims. Her courses at Stanford range from teaching a pioneering course on Islamic psychology, instructing medical students and residents on implicit bias, and integrating culture and religion into medical care, to teaching undergraduate and graduate students the psychology of xenophobia. Her most recent academic publications include an edited volume on Islamophobia and Psychiatry (Springer, 2019) and Applying Islamic Principles to Clinical Mental Health Care (Routledge, 2020). She has also produced a toolkit, fact sheet, and CME course, and is now editing a clinical textbook, on Muslim mental health for the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Awaad is particularly passionate about uncovering the historical roots of mental health care in the Islamic intellectual heritage. Through her outreach work at Stanford, she is also the clinical director of the San Francisco Bay Area branches of the Khalil Center, a spiritual wellness center pioneering the application of traditional Islamic spiritual healing methods to modern clinical psychology. She has been the recipient of several awards and grants for her work.
Prior to studying medicine, Dr. Awaad pursued classical Islamic studies in Damascus, Syria, and holds certifications (ijaza) in Qur’an, Islamic law, and other branches of the Islamic sciences. Dr. Awaad has also served as the first female professor of Islamic law at Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, CA, where she taught courses on Shafi’i Fiqh and women’s fiqh and Qur’anic sciences for nearly a decade. In addition, she serves as the director of The Rahmah Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating Muslim women and girls. At Rahmah, she oversees the Murbiyyah spiritual mentoring program for girls. Dr. Awaad is a nationally recognized speaker, award-winning teacher, researcher, and author in both the Islamic and medical sciences.