Academic General Pediatrics Fellowship

Judith Groner, MD
Program Director
Phone: (614) 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 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.

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

The fellowship program is ‘housed’ in the Section of Ambulatory Pediatrics which is the administrative home of Nationwide Children’s Hospital Primary Care Network (PCN).  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 fellowship curriculum is based on three domains: scholarly activity, pediatric education, and career development & leadership. Scholarly activity includes clinical and translational research, quality improvement science, and educational research. Pediatric education includes training and experience to become an excellent educator, with expertise in curriculum design, implementation, and evaluation. Multiple opportunities exist for formal and informal teaching at the medical school level (all years) and at the resident level. Fellows will be exposed to both areas (clinical and translational research and pediatric education) but will be asked to choose an emphasis in one of these during their fellowship. All fellows will receive training in quality improvement science. The program is two years with an optional third year if the fellow wishes to pursue a Masters of Science degree at the Ohio State University School of Public Health.

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.