Educational Opportunities

The overarching goal of the post-doctoral fellowship program in Pediatric Gastroenterology/Hepatology at Yale is to equip the subspecialty residents with the clinical and research skills to become independent and productive academic pediatric gastroenterologists. Yale University has a prestigious pediatric gastroenterology fellowship training program. Yale fellowship training program in pediatric gastroenterology was first established in 1988 by Dr. Frederick Suchy, and since then, the Yale University School of Medicine has pioneered the training of academic scholars. NIH support was first obtained in 1990 with training focused on developmental gastroenterology first with Dr Frederick Suchy as the PI (1990-1996), then with Dr. Susan Moyer as the PI (1996-2002). Currently Dr. Anthony Porto is the fellowship director.

Former fellows of our program have gone on to hold positions as Section Chief, Director of Pediatric Liver Center, and Residency Program Director in medical schools and hospitals across the country as well as becoming independent NIH-funded investigators. Our program is highly competitive and ranks among the top training programs in US for placing fellows in academic positions. All of the fellows in the program participate in laboratory and patient-oriented research during years 2 and 3. The training environment and program are highly developed, exposing trainees to the full spectrum of pediatric gastrointestinal diseases while maintaining the strong tradition of providing outstanding opportunities for research training.

Our program enrolls one fellow/year. Fellows enter the program after completing three years of residency in pediatrics and are expected to commit three (or more) years to our postdoctoral program. We accept one candidate into the program each year for combined clinical and research training.

The program is designed to allow postdoctoral fellows to experience a continuum of learning in both clinical gastroenterology/hepatology and research over three years. Throughout the training, fellows are exposed to a variety of children with complicated gastrointestinal and liver problems. Similarly, the complexity of contemporary research, both clinical and basic, requires the progressive acquisition of research skills and sufficient time to become familiar with an expert in research technologies. Consequently, the Pediatric Gastroenterology/Hepatology Program allows intense clinical experience during all three years as well as an early introduction to laboratory and clinical research in the first year of the program.