Scholarly Activity Training

Our fellows receive excellent comprehensive scholarly activity training during protected and call-free research rotations that make up the remaining 28 non-clinical service weeks of each year. Although some fellows enter the program with prior research experience, most do not, and each fellow is mentored to create a training program tailored to their interests and needs.

Fellows select a research mentor early in the course of the fellowship and develop a project, which they pursue throughout their fellowship. Mentors may be talented investigators in the division or outside of it, including basic science departments. However, the project must be relevant to pediatric pulmonology in the broadest sense, and it must represent an important research question, which can be pursued with rigor and in depth. The fellowship takes its scholarly activity training responsibilities seriously, and regular follow up of progress occurs not only from the mentor but from the division chief as well. Fellowship projects range from laboratory animal or cellular basic science to clinical, patient-based research. All are acceptable as long as they meet high standards of rigor and excellence. Our fellows present their findings at several national meetings each year, including the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference and the American Thoracic Society International Conference.

Underlying our research training program is an integrated research program in CF, asthma, and related pulmonary disorders, which is supported by several Center grants from the NIH and the CF Foundation, as well as a pool of R01 and other grants to participating investigators which total over $8 million of direct research support each year. This research training program includes dozens of potential mentors from 6 departments, most of them experienced and federally-funded. Our division is also the site of a CF Foundation funded Therapeutics Development Center network Center, which conducts multi-center clinical research projects in CF. Our division also participates in AsthmaNet, a federally funded network of asthma clinical research sites, the Severe Asthma Research Program, a federally funded observational study, and the state funded Ohio Pediatric Asthma Repository.