Program to Advance Training in Child Health Equity (PATH) Fellowship
Social determinants of health (SDOH)—the social circumstances in which people are born, work, live, and age—are known potent drivers of health especially in early childhood. The American Academy of Pediatrics has highlighted the urgent need to address poverty and racism—two prevalent and pervasive adverse social determinants—to promote children’s health and well-being.
Yet, despite the threats of poverty and racism to children and society at large, there is a lack of training programs that explicitly focus on training scientists in advancing child health equity. This critical gap needs to be filled to inform new initiatives and child health policies to address the root causes of societal inequities. The PATH Fellowship aims to fill this gap.
Our mission is to train the next generation of pediatric scientists to conduct state-of-the-art research that addresses the primary drivers of child health inequity: adverse SDOH, including poverty and racism. We will leverage the vast research training resources at UMass Chan Medical School, which include seven NIH-funded T32 research fellowship programs and the robust Children’s Medical Center of our clinical partner, UMass Memorial Health, which serves vulnerable and underserved children in Central Massachusetts.
The overarching goals of the program are to:
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Recruit outstanding fellows with attention to diversity.
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Create an inclusive learning environment that promotes the development of independent child health equity scientists through rigorous training.
- Launch the research careers for the next generation of child health equity pediatric scientists.
Doctoral level trainees (e.g., DO, MD, PhD) including general and subspecialty pediatricians and child psychologists will be recruited for the 3-year comprehensive, interdisciplinary training program.
The program will draw trainees from groups that are underrepresented in medicine and committed to dedicating their careers to child health equity research.