Infectious Disease Fellowship Program at MedStar Georgetown

The MedStar Health - Georgetown University Hospital Fellowship Program in Infectious Diseases

Welcome to the MedStar Georgetown University Infectious Diseases Program!

Our Infectious Diseases Fellowship is a two-year accredited program that provides comprehensive training for the next generation of ID clinicians and leaders, while meeting and exceeding all requirements for Infectious Diseases board eligibility.

Fellows train at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital with unique opportunities to rotate at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and internationally in our Global Health Track. We have two first-year fellows and two second-year fellows, but are also accredited for a fifth fellow. The fifth position is typically a fellow training in a combined track, such as Critical Care/Infectious Diseases. Please note that for combined tracks, applicants would apply to outside non-Infectious Diseases programs and then fulfill the ID requirements at Georgetown.

Our Fellowship’s mission prioritizes the following goals:

  • Educate in a supportive and nurturing environment.
  • Challenge and grow each learner, individualized to their strengths and needs.
  • Ensure exposure to a broad range of infectious diseases with adequate cases to achieve expertise.
  • Promote critical, evidence based thinking to manage complex cases, emerging infectious diseases and public health preparedness.
  • Provide opportunities for focused learning in research, HIV, transplant, stewardship, global health, and medical education.
  • Center Georgetown’s long-standing tradition of cura personalis—caring for the whole person.
  • Train the next leaders of Infectious Diseases specialists.

Please explore our website, hear from our Program Director below, and reach out to learn more about our outstanding program. We look forward to meeting you!

Why train here

Broad and In Depth Training with State of the Art Resources

MedStar Health is the largest healthcare provider in the Maryland and Washington, D.C., region, encompassing 10 hospitals and the MedStar Health Research Institute. Our fellows receive intensive training on the inpatient consult service, which takes place at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital with over 600 inpatient beds and 1300 physicians.

As the tertiary care facility for all of MedStar, Georgetown University Hospital provides care for a diverse and complicated range of patients. Ranked as one of the region’s best hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, Georgetown Hospital services span all fields, with centers of excellence in Transplant, Oncology, Gastroenterology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Orthopedics.

In December 2023, the much anticipated Verstandig Pavilion opened, with state of the art facilities, including new intensive care units, operating rooms, and emergency department.

 A look at the Verstandig Pavillion 

Fellows also train in the Georgetown Hospital Infectious Diseases outpatient clinic for ambulatory experience. Our clinic provides care for over 900 persons living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus. In addition, to their HIV continuity clinic, fellows also rotate through dedicated clinics in hepatitis B and C, solid organ transplant infections, tropical medicine and general outpatient ID. Expertise in HIV-STI care, management of home infusion services, and treatment adherence counseling are skills particularly emphasized.

 

Unique Opportunities

For the 2024 academic year, we are proud to be offering the option of a concentrated track in Transplant Infectious Diseases, coordinated and supervised by Dr. Rebecca Kumar. Participants’ schedules will be tailored to more dedicated clinical time in both inpatient and outpatient Transplant ID, with mentoring and guidance through a capstone research project.

Our fellows are also eligible to join the Georgetown Department of Medicine’s well-established Global Health Equity Track. Participants are trained in global health, ethics, law, policy, and tropical diseases through a longitudinal curriculum, elective rotations, and domestic and international electives. For fellows interested in Global Health and Public Policy, research collaboration with faculty at Georgetown’s premiere Global Health Institute is a unique opportunity.

Fellows are instrumental teachers for the Georgetown School of Medicine students and Internal Medicine residents, during clinical rotations and through the resident didactics series. In addition, our fellows are full voting members on the MedStar Georgetown Hospital Infection Prevention Committee and Antibiotic Utilization Committee, gaining valuable experience in infection prevention practices and policies, outbreak investigation, antibiotic stewardship, and selection of antimicrobials for the hospital formulary.

Our division enjoys a close working partnership with the National Institute of Health’s Infectious Diseases clinical team. Georgetown ID fellows spend a month at the NIH on the consultation service, two weeks at the NIH microbiology course, and participate in a weekly, interactive, virtual, inter-city conference. The NIH ID fellows also rotate in turn, for several months at Georgetown on our inpatient service.

Competitive Benefits

The MedStar Georgetown GME program offers competitive stipends and a wide range of benefits, including health benefits, retirement plan and employee assistance program. Please visit the MedStar Health GME website to view our House Staff Manual, Sample Contract, and the FY25 stipends and benefits offered by MedStar Health.

Please note: Georgetown University Hospital constantly seeks to improve employee benefits, all benefits are subject to change.

For additional information you may also contact the Benefits Office at (703) 558-1300.

Outstanding Location

Finally, being situated in our nation’s capital, our fellows are able to enjoy all that Washington D.C. has to offer– our National Mall and historic monuments, a vast network of parks and trails, the incomparable Smithsonian museums, world-class dining, theater and concerts, and much much more.

We hope this gives you an overview of what makes our program an outstanding and special place to train. But the most important part of any program is the people. Please take a look at this video from some of our faculty, to hear more about the program in our own voices!

MedStar Georgetown Infectious Disease Fellowship Program video

  

Curriculum

Inpatient Consult Service

The Inpatient Consult Service is a thriving service, split into four separate teams:

  • Transplant/Immunocompromised Service
  • ICU and General Infectious Diseases Service
  • Musculoskeletal Service 1 & 2

There is one attending with 1-2 fellows on both the Transplant/Immunocompromised service and the ICU/General service, often also with rotating residents and students. Each inpatient service census typically averages 12-20 patients, with a maximum cap of 15 follow-up patients and 5 new consults per fellow. All patients followed in the Infectious Diseases clinic that require inpatient care are admitted and covered through the Hospital Medicine service.

Fellows will rotate with one attending on the Musculoskeletal service for 4-8 weeks per year. This service provides care for patients undergoing limb salvage and other infectious diseases associated with plastic surgery and orthopedic surgery. Fellows also may choose to rotate through the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases inpatient consult service and gain valuable experience with infectious complications in complex bone marrow transplant recipients on clinical trials.

Through these inpatient rotations, fellows will gain expertise in diagnosing and treating infections in the following areas:

  • Critical Care
  • General Medicine
  • HIV
  • Surgery (Solid organ transplant, Neurosurgery, General, Otolaryngology, Orthopedics, Plastics, Urology)
  • Bone marrow transplant
  • Hematology/Oncology
  • Obstetrics & Gynecology


Outpatient Clinic

Our fellows have several months dedicated solely to outpatient Infectious Diseases care. During these blocks, fellows become expert in the treatment of the following areas:

  • General infectious diseases
  • Solid organ transplant (pre-transplant evaluation, post transplant infections)
  • Travel medicine
  • Tropical medicine
  • STI/PrEP/PEP
  • Viral hepatitis
  • Employee Health/Occupational Exposures

Additionally, each fellows holds a weekly half-day continuity clinic, with an emphasis on HIV management, through all 24 months of fellowship training (unless away on an international rotation).

The outpatient experience is supported by a comprehensive support staff that includes a dedicated nursing staff, social worker, treatment adherence specialist and specialty pharmacy liaisons.

Didactics

   Monday  Tuesday  Wednesday  Thursday  Friday
8:30AM  Morning report Journal club   AUC  
12:00pm   State of the Art or Core Curriculum Infection Prevention, Pulm-ID, Mid-Atlantic Transplant ID, or Board Review DOM Grand Rounds Inter-city ID conference or Trop Med
7:00 pm GWIDS*        

   
*Greater Washington Infectious Diseases Society

Clinical learning is complemented by structured didactics as detailed above. The core curriculum series is held 3x per month and mostly given by internal faculty, with occasional guest and fellow talks. Our weekly inter-city virtual conference with the NIH is a program highlight. Infection Prevention is a hospital wide meeting convened quarterly. Monthly meetings are held for Journal Club, State of the Art (in depth ID talks), Antibiotic Utilization Committee and the Greater Washington ID Society (GWIDS) presentations. GWIDS is a city-wide conference for all ID programs and the fellows’ capstone case presentation; Georgetown fellows typically present in April.

In addition to structured didactics, fellows, of course, pursue independent learning on their own, spurred by the cases they see. To support this, we provide access to the following resources: 

  • Dahlgren Memorial Library (The Graduate Health & Life Sciences Research Library at Georgetown University Medical Center
    • Offers expert medical librarian support
    • Can be accessed from home. Electronic resources consist of over 6302 journals, 142 databases including PubMed, 18 point of care tools, 20 medical apps, 4,806 online books
  • Access to PubMed
  • Access to UpToDate
  • IDSA membership which includes access to the Journal of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Infectious Diseases

Research

The Division of Infectious Diseases and Travel Medicine is committed to participation in state-of-the-art research projects and clinical trials in therapeutics for the treatment of infectious diseases. The overarching goals of our research endeavors are promotion of translational science into the clinical practice of infectious diseases, study of epidemiological questions in infectious diseases that affect our communities, contribution to development of novel agents to treat infectious diseases, and recruitment of a diverse patient population and the medically underserved into promising clinical trials.

Research & Scholarly Projects

Our fellowship program is committed to providing our fellows with experience in state of the art research and medical education opportunities.

Fellow schedules’ have protected blocks to allow dedicated time for research and quality improvement projects. Faculty provide mentorship to guide fellows through every step of the process– from project conception to publication. And the MedStar Health Research Institute further provides resources to support our trainees’ research pursuits.

Research Program Highlights, Dr. Joseph Timpone

Our research program is comprised of the following components:

 

  • Fellowship Research Program

    All our Infectious Disease fellows participate in clinical research and have been successful in publishing and presenting their work at national meetings including ID Week, CROI, AASLD, and the American Transplant Congress. They have been involved in studies regarding multi-drug resistant organisms, HIV associated complications, global health, and infections in solid organ transplant recipients. Below is a list of some of the fellows’ publications and presentations.

    Fellows’ Publications

    Fellows’ Presentations at National Meetings

    Faculty Publications

  • MedStar Health Research Institute (MHRI)

    As a fellow at MGUH, one has access to all of the resources provided by MHRI. All fellows have 30 hours of free biostatistical support from MHRI for each project that he or she participates in. Additionally, MHRI has an extensive patient clinical database throughout the entire MedStar system that can be used for data mining to answer a clinical research question.
  • Clinical Trials Unit

    Our Clinical Trials Unit (CTU) is comprised of experienced research coordinators and regulatory affairs personnel who are dedicated to the recruitment of patients into therapeutic drug trials of novel agents. Under the direction of Dr. Princy Kumar, the CTU performs clinical trials in all phases of drug development, from Phase I through Phase III. The CTU has particular expertise in performing pharmacokinetic studies for innovative antiretroviral agents for the treatment of HIV. MGUH has an inpatient Clinical Research Unit (CRU) where complex Phase 1 trials can be performed. Over the last 20+ years the Division of Infectious Diseases and Travel Medicine has received both federal funding as an AIDS Clinical Trials Unit (ACTU) and funding from the pharmaceutical industry to develop new treatments, including for HIV and its complications, Hepatitis C, Clostridium Difficile colitis, CLABSIs, and SARS-CoV-2 Infections. Our current research portfolio is extensive, encompassing many ongoing studies. For more information regarding our clinical trials unit, please contact katie.fan@medstar.net.

  • Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study/Women’s Interagency HIV Study (MWCCS)

    Since 1994 Georgetown has been a site for the NIH funded Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS) and combined with the prior Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study (MACS) in 2019 to form the MWCCS (combined cohort study). This prospective, observational, longitudinal cohort study of persons with and without HIV is focused on investigating the comorbidities (including cardiovascular disease, metabolic complications, etc), neurocognitive complications, and also psychosocial aspects of HIV infection. The MWCCS provides well-curated data and repository samples, for local and national investigators, including many trainee and faculty researchers at MGUH.

  • DC Center for AIDS Research (DC CFAR)

    The DC CFAR is a unique, city-wide consortium representing 260 investigators at nine collaborating research institutions in Washington, D.C. The DC CFAR is a part of a larger network of Centers for AIDS Research (CFARs) funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to provide scientific leadership and institutional infrastructure for HIV/AIDS research. Georgetown has been an integral part of the DC CFAR under the scientific leadership of Drs. Princy Kumar and Seble Kassaye. For more information, please visit the DC CFAR website.

  • DC Cohort

    The DC Cohort is a longitudinal research project collecting clinical data from >12,000 consenting persons living with HIV and receiving care at thirteen clinical sites in the District of Columbia, including Georgetown. The DC Cohort is sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It’s primary project goal is to improve the quality of care and treatment of persons living with HIV in the District of Columbia. This dataset is a key resource for Georgetown investigators researching HIV clinical questions, affecting our patients. For more information please visit the DC Cohort Website.

To broaden our fellows’ experience and knowledge, they are fully funded to attend the following conferences: IDweek, the GW Infectious Diseases board review course, IDSA fellow retreats, the Remington Winter Course in ID, and the annual fellows’ course in healthcare epidemiology, infection prevention & antimicrobial stewardship.

Teaching in turn to residents and students is a core expectation for our fellows– from clinical teaching on rounds to formal lectures to peer presentations. Fellows present regularly at inter-city conferences, internal medicine resident noon conference, pulmonary-ID conference and dedicated ID conferences. Our fellows have won numerous Department of Medicine teaching awards for the lectures and teaching they provide to students and residents. By graduation, our fellows have polished teaching portfolios and are experienced infectious diseases educators.


Fellowship Life

Infectious Disease Fellowship

 


Application Information

Fellowship Application Requirements

We are seeking talented, motivated individuals who are looking for an academic, rigorous, and diverse clinical infectious diseases training program. Applicants must be eligible to sit for the ABIM Internal Medicine Boards. Only J1 visas are sponsored through MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. We currently do not have the ability to sponsor H1B visas. We look forward to the opportunity to meet you and the application process is described below.

Application for the July 2025 cycle

Fellowship application begins in July (when ERAS opens). Interviews will be scheduled on a Wednesday between September – October.

This application cycle, all interviews will be virtual via Zoom (new window).

How to Apply through ERAS

You should apply for the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program at Georgetown University Hospital through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS). ERAS is an internet-based application process developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges to transmit fellowship applications, letters of recommendation, Program Director letters, medical transcripts and other supporting credentials from applicants, residency programs, and medical schools to fellowship program directors using the Internet. Upon receiving your application through ERAS, our program coordinator will contact candidates about interviews. Interviews are scheduled during September and October. Visit the ERAS website for information about the process or to register.

The “Match”

The Georgetown Fellowship participates 100% in the match and is “all in”. We feel that the match is the ideal opportunity for candidates to find the best training program for their needs and for programs to find the best learners for their program. Once you have applied to the Infectious Diseases Fellowship Program and interviewed with our faculty, fellows, and staff, we hope that you will rank Georgetown at the top of your list for training programs in Infectious Diseases.
Georgetown participates in the Medical Specialties Matching Program (MSMP) in Infectious Diseases. This is a computerized venue for matching an applicant’s preferences for fellowship positions with program directors preferences for applications. Visit the NRMP website for information or to register.

Important Dates for July 2025 cycle applicants:

  1. Infectious Disease ERAS Application Process opens July 3, 2024
  2. Schedule Interviews at Georgetown: end of August 2024
  3. Registration for NRMP Match List: August 23, 2024
  4. ID interviews at Georgetown: September/October 2024
  5. NRMP Rank Order List deadline: November 20, 2024
  6. NRMP Match Day: December 4, 2024
  7. Fellows begin their Infectious Disease Program on July 7, 2025

Visa Policy: Only J1 visas are sponsored through MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. We currently do not have the ability to sponsor H1B visas.

 

Contact us

Gayle P. Balba, MD
Fellowship Program Director
Associate Professor of Medicine
Director of the Hepatitis Clinic

MedStar Georgetown University Hospital
3800 Reservoir Road, N.W. – Pasquerilla Health Center, 5th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20007

Phone: 202-444-0154
Fax: 1-877-665-8072
Email: Gayle.P.Balba@gunet.georgetown.edu

 

Chaye Suber
Fellowship Program Administrator
Email: Chaye.C.Suber@medstar.net