Adolescent Medicine

The Division of Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, led by Division Chief, Elizabeth M. Alderman, MD, is one of the founding divisions of adolescent medicine in the United States, having been established in 1967.  Our fellowship program, led by Director, Elizabeth M. Alderman, MD, was among the first adolescent medicine programs to be accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in 1997 when adolescent medicine became a recognized subspecialty.  The program has been continuously accredited since then with a commendation in 2023 for substantial compliance with ACGME’s program requirements.

We offer a three-year fellowship program designed to provide training through a variety of clinical experiences, formal educational activities, structured research opportunities, and quality improvement projects.  The seven core faculty members of the Division of Adolescent Medicine are committed to personal, supportive mentoring of each fellow in both their clinical and scholarly pursuits.  Our mission as a faculty is to ensure the success of our trainees both during the fellowship and in their post-fellowship careers.

The fellowship program is applicable for those interested in a career in academic medicine or in clinical practice and qualifies the successful candidate for subspecialty board certification in adolescent medicine.  Since the first examination was given, all of our fellowship program graduates have taken and passed the adolescent medicine board certification examination.

The Department of Pediatrics of the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore/Albert Einstein College of Medicine is under the leadership of Michael D. Cabana, MD, MPH. Clinical activities of the Department take place at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, named as one of “America’s Best Children's Hospitals” by U.S. News & World Report. Adolescent Medicine fellows have the opportunity to utilize multiple clinical resources including:

• A dedicated adolescent medicine inpatient team
• Six weekly adolescent medicine subspecialty practice sessions
• A dedicated Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) practice
• A practice providing contraception and other gynecologic services for adolescent girls with complex chronic illnesses
• An eating disorder outpatient and inpatient interdisciplinary team program
• An LGBTQ+ wellness program including provision of gender affirming care
• An adolescent weight management program
• A “Girls and Bleeding” practice with pediatric hematology
• Participation in reproductive health care for patients in Bariatric Surgery program
• The largest school-based health program in New York State
• A college-based student health service
• Foster health care in community centers
• The nation’s first adolescent AIDS program
• A teen pregnancy program
• Sports Medicine Program
• Adolescent Psychiatry service and substance abuse program
• Advocacy Experience

The 28-bed Michael I. Cohen, MD, Adolescent Inpatient Floor at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore provides care for adolescents and young adults with diverse acute and chronic medical, surgical, gynecological, and psychosocial problems.  Each fellow, with faculty mentoring and supervision, spends five to eight weeks each year as the attending physician on the inpatient team, providing a rich teaching experience for our pediatric, family medicine and psychiatry residents and Einstein medical students. Fellows also provide consultation services throughout the Children’s Hospital.

The Adolescent Medicine Subspecialty Practice at the Children's Hospital at Montefiore, averaging 3,000 visits per year, provides primary care and consultation services for self- or physician-referred adolescents and young adults aged 13 through 21 years, as well as for many patients discharged from the adolescent medicine inpatient service. An in-depth experience in adolescent gynecology is stressed, with emphasis on reproductive endocrinology, contraception, including IUDs and implants, menstrual disorders, and congenital reproductive tract anomalies. We are a referral center for the evaluation and medical management of eating disorders in adolescents. In addition, we provide comprehensive reproductive health services and consultations for adolescents with chronic illness, which allows our fellows to participate in caring for teenagers with asthma, sickle cell anemia, cancer, renal disease, organ transplants, rheumatologic diseases, diabetes mellitus, and others. 

Young Men’s Health Initiative: This practice is for young men up to 24 years of age, who seek primary care, as well as sexual health care.

Our Long Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC) program was established over 7 years ago and provides intrauterine device and implant insertions and removals in outpatient setting and, occasionally operative, settings. For the last 4 years we have also trained all our fellows in these insertion and removal skills, based on their own interest in procedural skills. Referrals to this program come from our primary care affiliated sites as well as our sub-specialty practices.  Our Division also provides expert reproductive health care for healthy adolescents as well as those with complex medical issues through our programs to consult on girls for contraception and menstrual management.

The Eating Disorder Program at Montefiore is a collaborative effort by Adolescent Medicine and Child Psychiatry. The goal is to provide specialized eating disorder treatment both in the outpatient and inpatient settings, to patients who would be otherwise unable to access it. Fellows learn the medical management of eating disorders by caring for patients in our outpatient clinic and on the inpatient service, as well as by participating in multidisciplinary rounds to discuss challenging patient cases.

In our Division’s Transgender Care Program, we provide medical care for transgender and gender non-conforming youth, including consultation and supportive care for gender non-conforming young children, pubertal suppression for gender dysphoric early teens, and transitional hormonal care for older teens, in collaboration with mental health professionals.

The MAYS Clinic provides counseling and medical care for young people with HIV infection or AIDS and counseling and testing services for those at risk for this infection, as well as participating in AIDS clinical trials.

Over the three-years of the fellowship, fellows participate in all of these activities with more clinical activities in the first year and fewer in the second and third years to allow protected time for research and scholarly activities.

Fellows also gain experience in the management of adolescents in settings other than the traditional academic medical center. Experience working in the school-based health center at Lehman High School in the Bronx is part of the fellows' curriculum. An experience in college health is available to fellows at the student health service at Purchase College of the State University of New York in Westchester County. A sports medicine rotation, taught by pediatric/adolescent orthopedists is also part of the clinical curriculum. Fellows spend time at the Oval Center, part of the MAYS program, to learn how to care for adolescents and young adults living with HIV. At that site, they also learn more about the evaluation and treatment of sexually transmitted infections. Fellows learn about substance use in an outpatient community clinic setting. Fellows also participate in an adolescent psychiatry rotation. Fellows may wish to spend time working in the Girls and Bleeding Practice at CHAM and Teen Pregnancy Program at Montefiore Medical Center where care is provided for adolescent mothers and their newborns. An elective in pediatric and adolescent gynecology with OB/GYN is also available. Fellows also may elect to work with homeless and runaway youth at Bronx Health Collective, a drop-in center in Manhattan. Fellows may chose a rotation at one of our contract sites, Children’s Aid Society Bronx Health Center,to learn community based adolescent health care. A wide variety of other clinical electives are available including, an adolescent medicine private practice, rehabilitation medicine, endocrinology, dermatology, diabetes, and rheumatology.

The Division of Adolescent Medicine, although administratively part of the Department of Pediatrics, has additional professional support from the Departments of Epidemiology and Population Health, Family and Social Medicine, Obstetrics and Gynecology and Women's Health, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Surgery, Nutrition, Social Service, and Nursing. Each year medical students from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, students from other medical schools, and residents from pediatrics, family medicine, psychiatry and internal medicine receive training from the Division. Professional members of the Division and interfacing disciplines include: pediatricians; family medicine physicians; psychiatrists; psychologists; social workers; nurse practitioners and other nursing personnel; research assistants; school teachers; administrators; a health educator; and a child life worker. The total complement of professional personnel approximates 100.

Subspecialty support for the Division is provided by the Departments of Pediatrics and Medicine in the areas of dermatology, pulmonary diseases, rheumatology, hematology, oncology, nephrology, cardiology, endocrinology, immunology, infectious disease, gastroenterology, genetics, and neurology. Obstetrics & Gynecology and consultation in all the surgical subspecialties is available. The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences provides support, consultation, and education through the Division of Child/ Adolescent Psychiatry.

The Albert Einstein College of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation's leaders in research support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Einstein and Montefiore Medical Center have been awarded a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) by the NIH that supports the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), one of only 39 such centers in the nation. Faculty members of the Division of Adolescent Medicine have strong connections to the ICTR and utilize these to link our fellows to mentors who can help with study design and statistical analysis, if needed, for the fellow’s scholarly project. The Department of Pediatrics provides a research design and career development course required for all subspecialty fellows and the Division provides a weekly, informal seminar designed to support our fellows in their scholarly work. Fellows may pursue investigative interests in clinical, translational, epidemiological, and health care delivery areas.  Our adolescent medicine fellows regularly present their research at annual meetings of the Society for Adolescent Medicine, Pediatric Academic Societies, and North American Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology.

Computer support, space, equipment, and personnel are available to fellows.  Full text access to journal articles from the Gottesman Library at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine as well as from the Montefiore Medical Center library is available. Extensive resource materials on adolescent health are available through computerized literature search as well as in the Division library and files.  Office space and individual desktop computers are provided for fellows.

Fellowship positions commence each July 8.  Fellows are required to have had at least three years of house officer training, in Pediatrics, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics-Internal Medicine or Family Medicine. 

No in-house hospital night rotations are required.  In-house weekend rotations during the day only are required when the fellow is attending on the adolescent inpatient floor. One month each year is assigned as the vacation period.

Applicants should complete the ERAS common application for adolescent medicine fellowships and submit three letters of reference, including one from the applicant's Department Chairman or Director of Training, by July 31 of the year prior to beginning the fellowship training. Typically, a scheduled visit and interview is required for all applicants except where this presents a severe hardship. In accordance with ACGME guidelines, our application season will be conducted virtually. We fully participate in the National Resident Match Program.