Pediatric Scholars Program

The goal of our scholars program is to provide residents with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively answer a clinical question, whether one is aspiring to enter general pediatrics or a subspecialty.

UCSF Fresno has a variety of unique patient settings that inspire residents’ clinical questions:

• Community Regional Medical Center, a large academic center with the region’s only burn and Level I Trauma center and the area’s only perinatology program providing specialized care for high-risk pregnancies and deliveries; and
• Children’s Health Center, a busy community health center clinic serving an ethnically diverse, primarily indigent population.
• Valley Children’s Hospital, the only free-standing tertiary children’s hospital in the Central Valley;

Our research program consists of

• Interactive lectures and small group seminars.
• Close mentorship by faculty experts.
• Support for the completion and presentation of a scholarly project.

• • UCSF Fresno Pediatric Residents receive full departmental support for their projects that includes access to a statistician, IRB analysts, medical library, professional poster design/publication center, and funding to cover costs for a presentation at a regional or national scientific conference.  Residents receive protected research time of 1 week in their PGY-1 year, and 2 weeks in their PGY-2 and PGY-3 years.

• Research projects range from clinical research to quality improvement to medical education to evidence-based advocacy.  Examples of current and past resident projects include:

• Identifying Families’ Most Common Pyschosocial Stressors in a Pediatric Resident Clinic
• Evaluating Factors Associated with Limited Parental Health Literacy in a Level III NICU
• Strengthening the Medical Homes of Children with Down Syndrome
• A 15-year review of coccidioidomycosis at Children’s Hospital
• Evaluating the Safety and Efficacy of Perimembranous VSD Closure with Amplazter Vascular Plug II
• The effect of Hmong cultural beliefs on treatment in children with chronic illness
• Comparative Effectiveness of Intravenous versus Oral Antibiotics for Postdischarge Treatment of Acute Osteomyelitis in Children
• Epidemiological and Clinical Characteristics of Children with Newly Diagnosed IBD
• Evaluating the EKG Reading Competency of Pediatric Residents

For more information, contact our research program directors
Serena Yang, MD, MPH             Renee Kinman, MD, PhD
General Pediatrics                      Pediatric Endocrinology
syang@fresno.ucsf.edu             RKinman@fresno.ucsf.edu