Pediatrics Fellowship in Health Equity

About the Fellowship

The General Academic Pediatrics Fellowship in Health Equity at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is a two-year program with an optional third year. The program trains future leaders in providing high-quality care to all children with a focus on the underserved (not limited to socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, special health care needs or sexual orientation). This leadership starts in the clinic, but spans all levels of advocacy for child health including education of trainees, research, community involvement and policy development.

Why CHLA?

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is consistently ranked as one of the top pediatric health care institutions in the United States. What makes us unique, however, is our patient population. Our general pediatrics clinic is operated by AltaMed, which is the largest federally qualified health center in the nation. More than 90% of the clinic’s patients are on Medicaid/CHIP (known as MediCal in California) and 17% have special health care needs. In addition to primary medical care, there are optometry, dental and a variety of subspecialty clinics available within the clinic, as well as a robust patient-centered medical home team, which provides case management for 3,200 patients with complex medical needs, and family support services staffed by social workers and psychologists to address behavioral health and social health needs such as food and housing insecurity. This makes Children’s Hospital Los Angeles the perfect training ground for general pediatricians interested in addressing the social determinants of health in caring for an increasingly diverse patient population.

Learn More About the Training Program

The fellowship is composed of 40% clinical work, 25% education and 35% scholarly work in the first year, designed to focus on an area of the fellow’s interest. Clinical time decreases in second and third years.

Clinical Work

Primary care experience in the AltaMed CHLA clinic
- Two half-days of primary care clinic
- Two half-days of urgent care clinic
- Additional urgent care clinic shifts for extra pay
Two weeks each year attending on the inpatient setting at CHLA (supervised by a faculty member) or in the newborn nursery at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center

Education

Baseline curriculum covering a range of topics within health equity
- Weekly meetings with fellows from other programs
- Weekly meetings within the Division of General Pediatrics
- Weekly health equity lecture series covering a range of topics:
  - Social determinants of health
  - Community-based participatory research
  - Health disparities
  - Racism
  - Immigrant health
  - Healthcare financing
  - Policy development
- Leadership Education in Neurodevelopmental Disabilities program
  - Developing interdisciplinary leaders in healthcare with the necessary competencies for shaping effective health policies, programs, and outcomes for all children including those from underserved populations, autism spectrum disorder and special health care needs
- Introductory course in Clinical and Translational Research Study Design
CME stipend to cover memberships to professional organizations, licensure and participation in national conferences such as AAP-NCE or PAS
Graduate coursework through the Keck School of Medicine
- Public health
- Academic medicine
- Global health
One half-day of precepting residents in their continuity clinic
Teach in our residents’ Community Pediatrics rotations
Local legislative visits as well as an annual trip to Sacramento to advocate to state legislators on child healthcare topics with the American Academy of Pediatrics-California

Scholarly Work

We recognize that the ultimate goal of health equity can be addressed in many ways and want to provide our fellows with the flexibility to develop their areas of interest. Therefore, fellows will be allowed to choose from one of three tracks to pursue their personal education and scholarly work.
- Community advocacy
- Medical education
- Health services research
Fellows will identify both a general academic mentor and a primary research mentor to help with career guidance and project development, respectively. These individuals will be part of the fellow’s Scholarship Oversight Committee to evaluate the fellow’s progress with regard to scholarly activity.
Fellows are expected to submit scholarly work for presentation locally and nationally

How to Apply

Candidates must have successfully completed or be in good standing within their residency and also clear employee screenings as required by Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and the University of Southern California.

Please complete the linked application
Register through the NRMP Match.
Please use the USC format for your Curriculum Vitae
In addition, please answer the following essay / short answer questions and submit them to Kevin Fang and Jasna Watabayashi with the subject heading “GAP Fellowship Supplemental Questions”
- Please tell us about your interest in a career in academic pediatrics with a focus on health equity (Limit 500 words)
- Beyond clinical practice, our fellowship focuses on three domains: health services research, community advocacy, and medical education. For each of these, please describe the following (Limit 250 words for each of the three domain):
  - Your past experiences (if any…it’s okay if you don’t have any)
  - Any gaps in knowledge of skills
  - What you hope to gain from the fellowship
  - How you hope to apply these skills in your future career
Please note that all applicants require a California Medical License in order to participate in our program. This requires successful completion of 36 months of postgraduate training accredited by either the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC), or College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC) that includes four months of general medicine. An applicant will need to complete 24 consecutive months of training in the same program in order to be eligible for a Physician’s and Surgeon’s License.

Program Fast Facts

ACGME Accredited: (APA Accredited)
Fellowship duration: 2 years (with an optional third year)
Fellows per year: 1 to 2
Application deadline: Oct. 15, 11:59 p.m. PST
Postgraduate training required: Pediatrics internship and residency
U.S. citizenship required: No
Salary:
Post Graduate Year 4: $78,531 minimum
Post Graduate Year 5: $81,677 minimum
Post Graduate Year 6: $84,712 minimum
Post Graduate Year 7: $87,652 minimum
Post Graduate Year 8: $90,952 minimum
Post Graduate Year 9+: Please contact gme@chla.usc.edu
Benefits: Health and dental insurance, 14 days paid vacation, 6 personal days and a yearly educational stipend
Annual housing stipend: $6,000
Fellowship start date: August 1

Faculty

Kevin Fang, MD, MPH

Fellowship Director
Kevin Fang, MD, MPH is the Fellowship Director for the General Academic Pediatrics Fellowship in Health Equity. Prior to medical school, he taught high school biology through Teach For America. This experience shaped his interests in community advocacy and school health. During medical school at Case Western Reserve University, he founded Horizons – a program that connected local public high school students with undergraduate and medical student mentors in order to learn about public health topics such as diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases and substance abuse. For this work, he received the 2013 United States Public Health Service award in Excellence in Public Health. Kevin completed his pediatric internship and residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and then a fellowship in Community Medicine through Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. He joined the faculty of the Division of General Pediatrics in 2017, where he continues to work on projects at the intersection of schools and child health, focused on addressing social determinants of health.

Ashaunta Anderson, MD, MPH, MSHS

Ashaunta T. Anderson, MD, MPH, MSHS is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Dr. Anderson’s current research explores the origins of health disparities in the social environments of early childhood. Her work is particularly focused on the impact of early school readiness and racial socialization on later academic achievement and related health outcomes. She has conducted a number of qualitative assessments of early childhood educators, pediatricians, and minority parents with the goal of developing a culturally appropriate way to enhance a child’s education, health, and resilience in a multi-ethnic society.

Joyce Javier, MD, MPH, MS

Joyce R. Javier, MD, MPH, MS is an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and an Attending Physician at AltaMed General Pediatrics. She completed pediatrics residency training and a general academic pediatrics fellowship at Stanford University. She is a general pediatrician and physician scientist whose research over the past 18 years has focused on addressing health disparities among minority immigrant populations. Her most recent studies focus on recruitment of Filipino families in randomized controlled trials and using community partnered participatory research to decrease mental health stigma and prevent adolescent depression and suicide among Filipino youth by partnering with parents and community stakeholders to implement and evaluate evidence-based parenting interventions.

Elizabeth Kuilanoff, MD, MPH

Elizabeth Kuilanoff joined the CHLA General Pediatrics faculty in late 2019 after completing the Kaiser Permanente Fellowship in Community Medicine. During her fellowship, she created a community medicine medical student rotation, directed the KP Pediatric Resident Advocacy Rotation, and worked with the KP School of Medicine developing their service-learning curriculum. Dr. Kuilanoff now continues her work in community clinics providing care to a particularly underserved and vulnerable population. She enrolled in the Masters of Academic Medicine program at USC in early 2020 and was accepted to the AAP Young Physician Leadership Alliance. She is passionate about medical student and resident education and continues precepting trainees. She has been involved in teaching and mentoring since attending medical school at UC Davis (2014). Prior to medical school, she studied at UCLA where she earned both her BS in Psychobiology (2008) and MPH (2010) degrees.

Karen Camero, MD

Karen Camero is a recent graduate of our General Academic Pediatric fellowship in Health Equity, at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. Karen completed her undergraduate studies and medical school in Venezuela. After completing medical school, and a two-year post-graduate rotational internship, Karen returned to the US to pursue a career in pediatrics. Before residency, she took part in a scholars program at the University of California Los Angeles, that aims to expand the number of Spanish speaking primary care doctors in California. She completed her residency training at CHLA, where she served as Co-chair of the residency program’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. Her work in this committee helped expand the residency program’s efforts to recruit students from diverse backgrounds. She has a strong interest in topics like health literacy, caring for families with limited English proficiency, positive parenting, and anticipatory guidance. During her fellowship, she worked on a project to evaluate the effects on a positive parenting program on infant development and parental wellbeing. She also mentored a resident project on the development of an anticipatory guidance curriculum for pediatric residents, to help emphasize family-centered health promotion counseling and discussion of social determinants of health during clinic visits.