Allergy and Immunology Fellowship Program
Check out our Allergy/Immunology Fellowship Program Video to learn what makes our training program uniquely suited to your needs and interests!
Welcome from the Program Director
Dear Fellowship Applicants,
Thank you for your interest in the UNC Allergy and Immunology Fellowship Program! We are excited to share with you our passion for training the future leaders in Allergy and Immunology! As an ACGME-accredited program, we diligently strive to prepare fellows for board-certification and for successful careers across the spectrum of clinical medicine, education, quality improvement, and research. We believe that training fellows in critical thinking sets the foundation for this success and have built our program curriculum with this in mind.
We start by building a strong foundation in clinical allergy and immunology during the first year of fellowship. Our clinical curriculum is designed to provide equal exposure to both pediatric and adult patients across 4 unique outpatient sites each with their own unique patient populations with regards to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, and disease states. Fellows gain a broad clinical experience by rotating with our 18 pediatric and adult faculty who have clinical interests that span the breadth of allergy and immunology. With a dedicated continuity clinic in Pediatric and Adult Allergy and Immunology, fellows are then given a chance to develop their own practice style longitudinally across two years of training.
Along with providing state-of-the-art clinical care, our large faculty division also has a strong commitment to didactic education. Fellows are active participants in a weekly faculty-led journal club with the goal of being able to critically appraise literature to enhance clinical care and scholarly pursuits. Didactic sessions also include lectures led by faculty from other fields of medicine, such as dermatology, ENT, pulmonology, and hematology, highlighting the collaborative approach to patient care, education, and research within UNC.
During the 2nd year of fellowship, our fellows apply the critical thinking skills developed during year one to research and scholarly activities. Fellows leverage the vast research experience present within our faculty to identify areas of interest and develop their own research questions under the guidance of a research mentor. While many fellows may not ultimately pursue research in their careers, we see research as a way of thinking, and of asking a question and finding an answer. We set a high bar at UNC with an expectation that all fellows present abstracts at national meetings and author at least one publication, which our fellows easily achieve and surpass! This scholarly output ultimately enhances the competitiveness of our fellows as they enter the job market.
Through all these opportunities and more, the philosophy of our program is ultimately to set our fellows up for success for being the A&I leaders of tomorrow. We are commonly asked what we believe to be the greatest strength of our program. Without a shadow of a doubt, it is the commitment of our faculty to foster a nurturing, collaborative, friendly atmosphere for learning and growth. It is what led me to pursue my own fellowship training here at UNC and is what continues to keep me here!
I hope that I have convinced you that here at UNC, we embrace our role as teachers and mentors, and we take this responsibility seriously. I encourage you to browse our website to learn more about our program and if you have the chance to visit the area, we think you will agree that the Triangle area of North Carolina is an amazing place to live and learn!
I look forward to hearing from you!
Sincerely,
Amika Sood, MD
Program Director, UNC Allergy and Immunology Fellowship Program