Fellowship Programs Postdoctoral Programs Predoctoral Programs Course of Training Progress and Expectations Resources Admissions

• Application Form
• Accepted Scholars' Forms, Reports and Requirement (password protected)

Postdoctoral Programs

Postdoctoral trainees in the PRL-IHPS Transdisciplinary Health Policy Research (TdHPR) program are supported by a variety of research and training grants. Regardless of source of support, all fellows participate in the same course of training (described below). The major funding sources for the training program include:

• Training fellowships from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ);
• Clinical fellowships in UCSF departments including Family and Community Medicine, Medicine, Pediatrics, Surgery and others;
• Research fellowships sponsored by:
  • UCSF research units , such as the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, the Lesbian Health and Research Center, the Center for Health and Community and others
  • affiliated partner institutions, including the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Research Institute
  • individual research projects headed by IHPS-affiliated faculty, for example “Social Stigma in 4 Healthcare Organizations,” “Tobacco Targeting of African Americans,” “California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Taskforce,” and “Financial Conflict of Interest in Clinical Research.”
  
  Multiple sources of funding and support ensure that the TdHPR program includes trainees from a diverse array of disciplinary backgrounds and perspectives including clinical science and practice, public health and policy, and social and behavioral science. This diversity is the program’s hallmark.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The admission process varies depending on intended source of support. Please review the Admissions section below carefully.

Predoctoral Programs

At UCSF, doctoral students in the Schools of Medicine (including programs in Medical Anthropology and History of Health Sciences) and Nursing (including programs in Medical Sociology and Nursing Health Policy) may be supported by and participate in the PRL-IHPS training program. For more information on the joint PRL-IHPS/IHA predoctoral training program, students should contact:

Professor Charlene Harrington, PhD, RN, FAAN
Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UCSF School of Nursing
San Francisco, CA 94143-0612
e-mail: charlene.harrington@ucsf.edu

Course of Training

The course of training at PRL-IHPS includes 2 major components: (1) career and research mentoring and (2) a curriculum of participatory seminars.

Research and Career Mentoring

Mentoring may be understood as:

a process whereby an experienced, highly regarded, empathic person (the mentor) guides another individual (the mentee) in the development and examination of their own ideas, learning, and personal and professional development. The mentor, who often, but not necessarily, works in the same organization as the mentee, achieves this by listening and talking in confidence to the mentee.

“UCSF Faculty Mentoring Program Mentoring Facilitator Toolkit” UCSF Office of Academic Affairs. http://acpers.ucsf.edu/mentoring/ToolKit.pdf

Each fellow in the TdHPR program has two (or more) faculty members serve in the mentoring role: the Mentor and the Fellowship Committee Advisor (FCA). The Mentor guides the fellow’s overall progress in research and professional activities during his or her fellowship. Each fellow is also assigned an FCA, a member of the Fellowship Committee, whose role is to help ensure a productive relationship between the fellow and Mentor as well as to provide additional guidance and support in the areas of career development and professional trajectory.

Participatory Seminars

PRL-IHPS hosts a series of participatory seminars that are required of all trainees in the TdHPR fellowship program and frequently also attended by others. These seminars emphasize the insights gained through inter-disciplinary exchange as well as the power of learning by doing. The seminars seek to improve trainees' ability to analyze and communicate about health policy issues. They are facilitated by a multidisciplinary faculty and include basic concepts and approaches of those disciplines. Some seminars meet throughout the academic year (roughly Sept-June) while others meet only for an academic quarter. The seminars include:

• Writing Seminar (weekly, all year): fellows submit draft articles, grant proposals, book chapters, and other written material to be read, reviewed, and constructively criticized by their interdisciplinary colleagues.
  
• Works in Progress (WiP) Seminar (monthly, all year): fellows share their ongoing work focusing on questions, problems, and challenges to be discussed and resolved.
  
• Noon Seminar (bi-weekly, all year): a guest speaker series featuring health policy researchers and practitioners from UCSF, the Bay Area, and beyond.
  
• Tips, Tricks, and eThics (3T) Seminar (monthly, all year): how to be a successful, effective, and ethical esearcher/analyst/advocate and colleague.
  
• Culture and History of Health Policy (weekly, 1 quarter): important concepts and approaches to health policy research and analysis.
  
• Art and Science of Health Policy Research (weekly, 1 quarter): how to develop,fund, undertake, and present a health policy research project or program
  .
• Health Policy Across Disciplines (weekly, 1 quarter): approaches for conducting inter-disciplinary health policy research including using mixed methods.

Progress and Expectations

Given the interdisciplinary nature of the TdHPR program and the diverse career pathways and professional outcomes that characterize each fellowship cohort, no one model of post-fellowship placement is preferred. Some fellows undertake a nationwide search for an academic position while others move into positions at UCSF; fellows enterrresearch or other positions in government at the local, state, national, and global level; some fellows take positions in industry, ranging from research appointments at non-profit institutes to management positions in large healthcare providers; some fellows seek opportunities that combine research or policy work with clinical practice while others use the fellowship as an opportunity to transition out of clinical work into a career in policy analysis, advocacy, or research. From the perspective of the program, all of these pathways are appropriate, legitimate, and successful. Having in our program fellows with such diverse backgrounds and trajectories models the transdisciplinary efforts characterizing effective health policy development and implementation.

Resources

The following UCSF programs and departments serve as resources to fellows:

Center for Health and Community

The Center for Health and Community at UCSF (CHC) was established to assess the challenges of the changing health care delivery environment and identify policies and interventions that will maximize the beneficial impact of changing health care delivery system. The Center is comprised of programs and more than 250 faculty members from all four UCSF Schools who have been at the cutting edge of health and policy-related research for many years. Programs and faculty include the basic social and behavioral scientists in epidemiology, health policy, anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, bioethics, economics, and clinical research. Major areas of research interest include health care delivery systems, community health, methods and measurements, and health problems of key populations.

Participating Clinical Programs

Related Training Programs at UCSF

IHPS participates in two health-policy related post-doctoral training programs sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Scholars in Health Policy Research Program and Health and Society Scholars Program. These programs provide multidepartmental and multidisciplinary postdoctoral training in health and health policy research for scholars with degrees and backgrounds in a wide variety of disciplines.

The Traineeships in AIDS Prevention Studies (TAPS) is a postdoctoral research training program offered at the University of California, San Francisco in the areas of epidemiology, behavioral medicine, and health policy.

Admissions

Requirements

Postdoctoral and mid-career fellowships are open to those with health professional degrees (MD, DDS, etc.) or those with a PhD in a disciplinary field or equivalent degree from a professional school such as public health, public policy, and business administration, are eligible for the program. Those with clinical backgrounds should have completed residency training. Those with other doctoral degrees should have demonstrated a clear commitment to work in the health services and policy research fields.

Process and Deadlines

Irrespective of funding source (see above), all prospective fellows complete the same application. The deadline for submitting the application depends on the funding source as follows:

• Training fellowship applications (for support by AHRQ) are due December 1 of the year prior to entrance, i.e by December 1, 2007 for a July 1, 2008 start date;
• Clinical fellowship (in UCSF clinical departments) and Research fellowship (in UCSF research units, partner organizations, or UCSF projects) applications are accepted year-round.

Application

Application (in Word format)

If you prefer a hard copy of the application, please email:

Ernestine Florence