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Endocrinology Fellowship

The University of California at Irvine (UCI) in partnership with Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) offers a three-year training program in a fully ACGME accredited, university-based fellowship program. Our endocrine and diabetes program aims to prepare fellows for careers as leaders in clinical or academic medicine through a superior academic, professional, and collegial atmosphere.    

 
Director's Message  »

The UCI/CHOC Pediatric Endocrinology Fellowship program is a three-year program designed to provide in-depth training for a board eligible/ board certified pediatricians for an independent career in academic and clinical pediatric endocrinology and diabetes.  We aim to provide the fellow with:

Structured one-on-one mentoring to help guide their chosen career path

Opportunities for conducting and presenting research (basic science, translational, clinical and educational) as well as quality improvement projects

Promoting a collaborative culture and ensuring protection to the fellow to ensure wellness and minimize “burnout”

Experience to provide patient-centered, evidence-based, high quality and innovative care to patients and their families

Dr. Himala Kashmiri is the program director for the UCI-CHOC Pediatric Endocrinology fellowship program. Dr. Kashmiri completed his undergraduate training at the University of Texas at Austin and then attended medical school at the University of North Texas Health Science Center.  He went onto complete his pediatric residency at the Ronald McDonald Children’s Hospital in Maywood, IL, and then his fellowship in Diabetes and Endocrinology at the Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI).  In addition to his general Endocrine and Diabetes practice, he also leads the Thyroid Cancer clinic and Disorders of Sex Development clinic.  In his spare time, he enjoys fitness, basketball, traveling, and spending time with his family.

 

Faculty  »

Himala Kashmiri, DO – Program Director. Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include growth, thyroid cancer, and disorders of sex development.

The program director shall ensure the fellow fulfills the requirements of the ACGME related to the six general core competencies. The program director will also be responsible for the creation of a core curriculum in scholarly activities, incorporate feedback and responsibilities to guide the fellow in his/her career path, help the fellow identify a mentor, participate in the Scholarship Oversight Committee responsible for overseeing and assessing the progress of each trainee, and provide verification to the ABP of the successful completion of training of the fellow.

Mark Daniels, MD – Division Chief. Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include diabetes, transgender, and endocrinopathies in long-term cancers.

Amrit Bhangoo, MD – Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include growth disorders, disorders of sex differentiation, insulin resistance

Timothy Flannery, MD – Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include growth disorders, pituitary, and calcium disorders.

Nikta Forghani, MD – Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include Turner syndrome, transgender, and ovarian failure.

Sejal Kadakia, MD – Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include Prader-Willi syndrome, thyroid cancer, type 1 diabetes.

Christina Reh, MD – Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include cystic fibrosis-related diabetes, transgender, and Turner syndrome.

Lien Trinh, MD – Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include congenital adrenal hyperplasia, long-term cancer survivorship, and Prader-Willi syndrome.

Daina Dreimane, MD – Assistant Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, UCI School of Medicine. Publications and research interests include type 2 diabetes and diabetes technology.

In addition, our team includes 3 licensed nurse practitioners, 9 diabetes educators, 3 dieticians, a psychologist, and a social worker. We are an ADA accredited program and offer patients and their families a highly educational diabetes and pump program with a variety of classes available. 

 
Curriculum »

Lecture Series

The “Lecture Series” is designed to emphasize the ABP content specifications for required material to successfully pass the Pediatric Endocrinology certification exam and covers a broad range of endocrine topics.

Faculty will provide weekly lectures, but the fellows will also take a role in presenting to allow for the development of presentation skills and knowledge-based teaching. Core topics are covered in a curriculum so as to provide a repetition of core topics at least twice during his/ her fellowship. Assignments are varied based on each fellow’s interests and each fellows’ knowledge base. Attendance is required and monitored. 

Grand Rounds

Grand Rounds is Wednesdays from 8-9 am. These conferences provide updates and reviews on a broad range of both general pediatric and subspecialty pediatric topics. Attendance is encouraged at pertinent conferences. Fellows will also give Grand Rounds with the supervision of a faculty mentor if desired.

Conferences

Endocrine Case Conference

Case(s) presentation of diabetic and endocrine cases generated from the outpatient and/or inpatient setting. The fellow will be required to participate and will be encouraged to present cases for discussion and provide opportunities for education.

Disorder of Sex Development Conference

This is a monthly multidisciplinary conference with our pediatric urology team, medical geneticist, and psychologist or psychiatrist (if needed) to discuss the presentation and management needed in patients with disorders of sex development.

Pediatric Med/Surg Morbidity and Mortality Conference

Fellow will participate in discussions in the morbidity and mortality case discussions in a variety of different divisions including PICU and NICU.

Monthly Conferences

Journal Club

A rotating schedule for faculty presenters and fellow will be made to present and lead a discussion on peer-reviewed evidence-based Endocrine topic. Research methodology, strength of the study, clinical applications, study design, and statistics are amongst the potential discussion topics.

Fellows’ Core Curriculum

Fellow is expected to participate and attend a joint fellowship curriculum with other pediatric subspecialty fellows on a variety of topics including epidemiology, biostatistics, clinical and lab research methodology, study design, grant preparation, principles of EBM, research ethics, teaching, professionalism, systems-based practice.
Applications »
Applications are accepted through the Electronic Resident Application System (ERAS) and we participate in the National Residency Match Program (NRMP).
Fellowship Locations  »

Children’s Hospital of Orange County

CHOC is an academic, community-based hospital that serves as the main site for training in the fellowship. It has 334 beds, including a 30-bed PICU, 12-bed Cardiac ICU, 72-bed NICU, and separate Oncology and Neuroscience units. In 2016-2017, there were 12,891 hospital discharges with 89,791 ED visits and 4,252 transports to CHOC. CHOC’s ED is a Level II pediatric trauma center. CHOC also operates primary care and specialty clinics throughout the county. The hospital serves about 2 million patients over 4 counties. The training and education of medical students, residents, and fellows has been a longstanding focus of CHOC. Each year, CHOC trains about 290 residents and fellows from 38 different training programs, along with 190 medical students.

CHOC has an active Innovation Institute. The Sharon Disney Lund Medical Intelligence and Innovation Institute (MI3) at CHOC Children’s is a unique and first-of-its-kind institute that creates, focuses, and executes projects in the areas of intelligence and innovation in pediatric medicine. These two interrelated disciplines, extremely limited in development in the pediatric realm, hold great promise to change the trajectory of pediatric care around the world. MI3 aims to foster robust developments in artificial intelligence methodologies, as well as innovative advances in emerging areas such as genomic medicine, regenerative medicine, robotics, nanotechnology, and medical applications/devices. MI3 is dedicated to empowering data intelligence and medical innovation at CHOC Children’s and driving innovation leadership in the international pediatrics community. Fellow physicians in our program will be exposed to MI3 and have the opportunity to partake in an innovation project during their training if they choose.

 
Research »

As research is an integral part of the fellowship, this will begin in the first year to provide the fellow an opportunity to conduct research, choose an area of interest for scholarly activity, identify a mentor and commence research. In the first year, fellows have 4 weeks dedicated to research to allow for the identification of a mentor and a project. Fellows will then prepare a research proposal with the guidance of the mentor.

With guidance from the program director, the fellows will select a Scholarly Oversight Committee (SOC) to help oversee their research design and progress.

The SOC is composed of at least 3 faculty members who:

Meet with the fellow as a group at least twice per year

Review the training progress of the fellow

              Making recommendations to the fellow regarding aspects of their progress.

During the 2nd and 3rd year of fellowship, fellows are expected to complete 2 years of research training.

- 80% of their time will be spent working on research projects under the direction of a primary mentor.

- Progress will be assessed by the research mentor, SOC and CCC.

- Fellows will be encouraged to submit abstracts to national meetings, submit and publish study results and consider submission of grant applications.

- Fellows will receive education regarding study design, IRB preparation, epidemiology, biostatistics and other elements to help promote a successful research project from the research mentor, pediatric endocrine faculty, and the Fellow’s Core Curriculum. Multiple scholarly opportunities exist within the division as well as with collaboration with other sections of the Department of Pediatrics and University of California at Irvine.

- The Islet Program at UCI offers the fellow a unique experience in diabetes bench research (e.g. islet transplantation) with direct mentorship and supervision. 

 
Contact Us  »

UCI/CHOC Pediatric Endocrinology Fellowship Program

455 S. Main St

Orange, CA 92868


Daniela Morelos 

Pediatric Endocrinology Fellowship Program Coordinator

UCI.CHOC.PedsEndo@choc.org

Ph (714) 509-8866 | Fax (714) 509-4010

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