The Harvard Medical School Fellowship in General Medicine and Primary Care offers 2-year academic fellowships to prepare talented physicians for careers in academic medicine. Since the program began in 1979, we have trained over 290 fellows, who now work in prestigious institutions nationally and internationally. Funded by a federal grant and participating clinical institutions, the Program offers each Fellow an appointment at Harvard Medical School and one of its affiliated hospitals or departments. All fellows qualifying for acceptance to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health pursue a rigorous curriculum that can lead to a Master of Public Health or Master of Science degree. Each Fellow is expected to design, conduct, present, and publish several original investigative projects that lay the foundation for future careers as leaders in general medicine and research.
The Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care (DGIM) has over 40 faculty investigators and is internationally recognized for its research program, particularly in the areas of patient safety, quality improvement, and the effects of information technology and telehealth on access to and quality of care. Other research interests of Division members include implementation science, health care disparities, social epidemiology, transitions in care, health services research, and medical ethics.
The Division includes several experienced biostatisticians and epidemiologists, as well as a variety of statistical programmers, data analysts, research pharmacists, research assistants, fellows, and medical students. There is an abundance of DGIM faculty who are eager to mentor DGIM fellows. In addition, four other fellowships associated with the Division are the Harvard-Brigham Research Fellowship in Hospital Medicine, the Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy and Practice, the Biomedical Informatics Research Training (BIRT) Fellowship, and the BWH Pharmacoepidemiology/Pharmacoeconomics Fellowship – see below for more details.
The Division also hosts the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice and leads the Program in Clinical Effectiveness, a joint program with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a core component of the Fellowship. The DGIM Site Directors are Drs. Lipika Samal and Heather Baer. Dr. Samal is a primary care physician whose research focuses on clinical decision support and other interventions for chronic kidney disease. Dr. Baer is an epidemiologist who conducts research on management of overweight and obesity, with a particular emphasis on strategies using health information technology.
Please contact Jessica Pham at gimfellowship@mgh.harvard.edu for further information. For more information about the fellowship and to apply, click here.
Primary Mentor: Jeffrey L. Schnipper, MD, MPH
Secondary Mentor: Anuj K. Dalal, MD
Dr. Serna is hospital medicine research fellow at BWH. Her research interests include the promotion of advance care planning among hospitalized general medicine patients using implementation science techniques and health information technology. She earned her BA at the University of Houston and her MD at the Baylor College of Medicine. She completed her residency training in Internal Medicine at University of Miami / Jackson Memorial Hospital, where she was also a chief resident.
Primary Mentor: Stephanie Mueller, MD, MPH
Dr. Maitra is a hospital medicine research fellow at BWH. Her research interests include understanding presentations of intimate partner violence (IPV) in hospitalized medical patients and providing equitable and trauma-informed care for these patients. She earned her BA at Harvard College, her MD at Stanford University School of Medicine, and her PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University [where she was awarded a Soros Fellowship]. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine, Primary Care and Population Medicine track, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 2021.
This fellowship is designed to give future hospitalist-researchers the training, experience, and mentorship they need to thrive in an academic medical center and become independently funded clinical researchers in areas such as quality improvement, patient safety, patient-centered outcomes research, and improving the equity and value of health care delivery. As with the Harvard General Medicine Fellowship, hospitalist fellows generally complete an MPH at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, engage in fellow-driven research projects under the mentorship of experienced research faculty, and participate in weekly research-in-progress seminars. Hospitalist fellows also receive additional training in topics of relevance to hospital medicine research, including inpatient quality improvement, informatics, implementation science, and health policy. Fellows attend on teaching and non-teaching services at BWH and Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital 8 weeks per year.
For more information about the fellowship and to apply, click here.
The Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care in the Department of Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital is part of the National Library of Medicine Informatics Research Fellowship. The Biomedical Informatics and Data Science Research Training (BIRT) Program is a consortium of leading informatics laboratories at Harvard. It is supported by a grant from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. For United States citizens and permanent residents, this postdoctoral fellowship provides a stipend, tuition, and travel funds. Selected fellows are provided with many opportunities for training, research, interaction, and collaboration. All fellows also pursue the two-year part-time Harvard Medical School Master of Biomedical Informatics degree.
To apply for a BIRT fellowship, candidates submit an application to the MBI program. No additional materials are required. Offers to join the BIRT fellowship program are contingent on available program funding from the National Library of Medicine. To be eligible you must:
We welcome and encourage applications from individuals from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in health-related sciences (Blacks or African Americans, Hispanics or Latinos, American Indians or Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders), individuals with disabilities, and individuals from disadvantageous backgrounds.
The Commonwealth Fund's Harkness Fellowships in Health Care Policy and Practice provide a unique opportunity for individuals who are committed to advancing health care policy and practice to spend a year in the United States conducting internationally comparative research with mentorship from leading U.S. experts. Alongside their research, Fellows engage in a series of leadership development activities, gain an in-depth understanding of the U.S. health care system and policy landscape, and build a network for cross-national exchange and collaboration. The program is open to eligible individuals from the following countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom.
For more information about the fellowship and to apply, click here.
The Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics offers a general internal medicine fellowship with a focus on the epidemiology, outcomes, and pricing related to prescription drugs. It is intended for individuals completing their clinical residencies who are looking to receive additional methods training and practical experience conducting research, including use of large public and private medical and drug claims databases. Fellowships usually last 2 years and can include concurrent enrollment in a degree program at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Visit the Division website to learn more and see a current list of faculty, and visit the Harvard General Internal Medicine fellowship website for application details
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