Academic General Pediatrics

Judith Groner, MD
Program Director
Phone: 722-4957

Trisha Strader
Program Coordinator
Trisha.Strader@nationwidechildrens.org

Academic General Pediatrics Fellowship Overview

The mission of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Academic General Pediatrics (AGP) fellowship program is to train general pediatricians who will be academic leaders of the future with the pediatric generalist approach. The generalist orientation within an academic institution includes “a focus on individual and population health, research translation to practice and policy, a broad view of health systems, and is critical for our nation to achieve Healthy People 2010 goals of improving the quality of health care and eliminating disparities in health” (Cheng and Szilagyi, 2007). The academic generalist plays a role in research, teaching, patient care, advocacy and administration within a pediatric department or academic institution.

This is a new fellowship for Nationwide Children’s, begun in 2011, and is funded by the Section of Ambulatory Pediatrics.  While there is not yet ACGME Certification for AGP Fellowships, the Academic Pediatrics Association (APA) provides certification for such fellowships.  The AGP fellowship has already received a planning site visit from the APA and is in the process of obtaining certification.
 
The fellowship program is ‘housed’ in the Section of Ambulatory Pediatrics which is the administrative home of Nationwide Children’s Hospital Primary Care Network (NCHPCN).  The PCN is comprised of ten pediatric primary care centers in Columbus Ohio, serving children and adolescents from birth to age 21 and two mobile units which deliver outreach care in both urban Columbus Ohio, and rural Appalachian Ohio. There are over 65,000 unique patients in the network, with greater than 161,000 visits per year. Patients in the PCN come from multiple racial and ethnic groups (African American, Caucasian, Somalia, Hispanic, rural) The entire PCN uses EPIC as the electronic medical record. Patient information can be extracted from the EPIC system when appropriate for quality improvement and patient oriented research.  

The curriculum is based on three domains: scholarly activity, education, and career development & leadership. The program focus is on underserved pediatric populations and pediatric education. Fellows will receive mentoring in both scholarly activity and pediatric education.  Scholarly activity includes clinical and translational research, quality improvement, and educational research. Pediatric education includes training and experience to become an expert educator, curriculum design, implementation, and evaluation. Fellows will be exposed to both areas (scholarly activity and pediatric education) but will be asked to choose an emphasis in one.

Clinical experience will be at Near East Primary Care Clinic with a focus on resident teaching.  Multiple opportunities exist for formal and informal teaching at the medical school level (all years) and at the resident level.

Graduates of this fellowship will assume academic leadership positions in the health care of pediatric underserved populations, with their primary focus education of health professionals and research in areas that will improve the overall health of these populations of children.