Adolescent Medicine Fellowship

Inpatient and outpatient subspecialty training occurs primarily at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health, one of the top children’s hospitals in the nation. While on-service, fellows lead an adolescent consultation service at Riley Hospital. Outpatient adolescent subspecialty care is provided at a downtown IU Health location, and the Charis Eating Disorders Program (an IU Health satellite clinic). Subspecialty outpatient experiences include the following:

• The Adolescent Consultation Clinic provides care for complex conditions to adolescents referred by physicians throughout Indiana.
• The Adolescent & Young Adult Reproductive and Sexual Health Program offers consultative care to children, adolescents and young adults for gynecological concerns, menstrual disorders, and contraception, including long acting reversible contraceptive placement and contraception in adolescents with chronic illness.
• The Charis Center for Eating Disorders provides comprehensive evaluation and treatment for children, adolescents and adults. Multidisciplinary services include outpatient care, an intensive outpatient program, and a partial hospitalization program.
• The Gender Health Program evaluates for gender dysphoria, adjustment to social transition, and gender identity transition.
• Adolescent Medicine faculty provide care through collaborative program, including a hematology and adolescent medicine clinic, a multidisciplinary cancer survivor program, and an onco-fertility program

Faculty direct and staff a system of community-based adolescent clinics where fellows learn adolescent primary care and population health. The Teen Care Program through Eskenazi Health maintains a system of six adolescent clinics providing primary care and reproductive health care for low income teens in Marion County in community settings. The Teen Care Program is a designated medical home for adolescents, and serves diverse cultural and linguistic populations.

All fellows will rotate in sports medicine and the Bellflower STD Clinic. Electives are based upon fellow interest and time. Recent fellow electives have included advanced training in eating disorders and gender health, palliative care, clinical ethics, dermatology, school-based health and substance use disorder.

Early in the first year of fellowship, trainees are exposed to the research activities of investigators in Adolescent Medicine. By the end of the first quarter, the fellow selects a faculty for an initial mentored research experience. Using extant data within the division, the fellow and mentor prepare an abstract for presentation at the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine annual meeting.

Fellows’ main research projects may be part of a faculty member’s research program, or may be an independent project developed in conjunction with adolescent faculty. Examples of fellow projects include an analysis of data collected as part of a larger project on oral contraceptive adherence, interviews with adolescent cancer patients and their parents about fertility preservation, depo self-administration, adolescent preventive care in family medicine and the confluence of pregnancy and new HIV diagnosis in Western Kenya.

Fellows select their primary research topic in the second half of Year 1. They are expected to create their research protocol, submit their IRB application, and collect data across the next two years. Fellows typically have presented their research findings at national meetings of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine and have been the first author of a manuscript submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

Fellows may complete coursework leading to a Master’s Degree. The IU School of Medicine CITE program leads to a Master’s of Science in Clinical Research, and the Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health provides opportunities for a Master’s in Public Health (MPH). Individual fellows have also chosen to pursue other degrees and certification, such as clinical ethics. Fellows interested in a career in research are encouraged to apply for one of IU School of Medicine's NIH Supported T32 Research Training Awards.