Boston Children’s Hospital

Training Program Director: Tanvi Sharma, MD, MPH

Associate Director/Co-Director: Lakshmi Ganapathi, MBBS

Coordinator: Ms. Nora Boyle

Chief, Infectious Diseases: Dennis Kim, MD, PhD

Major Features of Training Program: Our Pediatric Infectious Diseases (ID) Fellowship Program is an ACGME-accredited training program affiliated with Harvard Medical School. Fellows gain extensive clinical experience in general ID, immunocompromised hosts ID, perinatal infections, outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy, antimicrobial stewardship, infection prevention and control, microbiology, and patient safety and quality improvement. Our program welcomes candidates interested in combined med-peds ID fellowship as well as dual pediatric subspecialty training, and we have a well-established training model for fellows who choose these pathways.

Fellows have the opportunity to engage in research in a broad range of fields including basic science and laboratory investigation, clinical outcomes and health services research, public health and epidemiology, global health, bioinformatics, and transplant ID. Fellows may select research mentors from across Harvard-affiliated hospitals and institutions, and also have access to coursework and degree programs that provide specialized education in research methodologies. Our graduating fellows have been highly successful in achieving academic faculty positions within institutions around the U.S. and globally, independent grant funding, and clinical or research leadership roles. Our fellowship program provides a strong track record for training fellows who will become future pioneers and thought leaders within pediatric ID, and advocates for overall child health.

Title(s) of Recent Fellows’ Published Research Papers:
1. McCulloh RJ, Fouquet SD, Herigon JC, Biondi EA, Kennedy B, Kerns E, DePorre A, Markham JL, Chan YR, Nelson K, Newland JG. “Development and implementation of a mobile device-based pediatric electronic decision support tool as part of a national practice standardization project.” J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2018 Jun 7.

2. Larry K. Kociolek, William J. Muller, Rebecca Yee, Jennifer Dien Bard, Cameron A. Brown, Paula Revell, Hanna Wardell, Timothy J. Savage, et al. Comparison of upper respiratory viral load distributions in asymptomatic and symptomatic children diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection in pediatric hospital testing programs. Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Oct 2020.

3. Campbell JI, Pham TT, Le T, Dang TTH, Chandonnet CJ, Truong TH, Duong H, Nguyen DD, Le TH, Tran TH, Nguyen TKO, Ho TMT, Le KN, Pollack TM, Sandora TJ. Facilitators and barriers to a family empowerment strategy to improve healthcare worker hand hygiene in a resource-limited setting. Am J Infect Control. 2020 May 31. PMID: 32492500.

4. Dubois M, Faro EZ, Lee DS, Katin V, Kenkou K, Fiori KP. Integrating childhood TB: applying the care delivery value chain to improve pediatric HIV/TB services in Togo, West Africa. AIDS Care. 2020 Nov; 32(11): 1445-1450.

5. Siegel SJ and Rakoff-Nahoum S. 2019. Innate immune pattern recognition and the development of intestinal cancer. In: Microbiome and Cancer, edited by Robertson ES. Springer, 2019. p. 299-316

Grant Funding Received for Fellow Research Projects:
1. NIH T32 training grant (6 fellows)
2. LEAP Fellowship – IDSA (1 fellow)
3. PIDS fellowship award (1 fellow)
4. Pediatric Scientist Development Program (3 fellows)
5. T15 NIH/NLM training grant (1 fellow)
6. Charles A. King Trust (1 fellow)
7. K12 NIH/NICHD training grant (1 fellow)
8. Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (1 fellow)

Affiliated Hospitals: Boston Children’s Hospital

Number of Inpatient/Outpatient Consults Per Year: 6,569

Fellows Accepted Each Year: 3

Visas Accepted: J1, H1B

Is Funding Ensured for all 3 Years?: Yes

Is Completion of Pediatric Residency Training in the U.S. or Canada a Requirement?: No

Program Provides Training, Didactic Lectures, Hands-On Experience, or Antimicrobial Stewardship Meetings/Membership in:
1. Microbiology lab on site
2. Infection control and hospital epidemiology
3. Antimicrobial stewardship
4. Immunocompromised hosts

Opportunities to Fulfill the ABP Requirements for Scholarly Activity is Available in the Following General Areas:
1. Antimicrobial agents
2. Antimicrobial stewardship
3. Bacteriology/bacterial infections
4. Clinical trials
5. Epidemiology and statistics
6. Global health
7. HIV
8. Immunizations
9. Infection control/hospital epidemiology
10. Medical Education
11. Mycology/fungal infections
12. Parasitology/parasitic diseases
13. Public health
14. Quality improvement
15. Virology/viral diseases
16. Transplant medicine

Opportunities exist for research outside of the ID Division?: Yes

Program offers the opportunity to obtain a Master’s degree in a field such as Public Health, Education, Clinical Sciences, or Epidemiology: Yes