Klingenstein Medical Student Program

Based upon its review of official data, the Foundation is concerned that there are too few child and adolescent psychiatrists to service the needs of the nation’s children. Further, without intervention, the shortage of pediatric psychiatrists is expected to increase. To address this dearth of active and upcoming child and adolescent psychiatrists, the Foundation seeks to increase the number of child and adolescent psychiatrists by supporting programs that expose medical students to the field.

Currently, the Foundation funds ten medical schools across the country to develop and implement programs that effectively recruit medical students into pediatric psychiatry. The first program was established at the Yale Child Study Center in 2002. The Yale program was inspired by the late Donald J. Cohen, a deeply valued advisor to the Foundation. Dr. Cohen, a tremendous force in pediatric psychiatry, was committed to nurturing medical students and young psychiatrists through mentorship. His vision of mentorship was reflected in Yale’s program, and the program met with such success that the Foundation expanded its funding to ten more schools.

Each funded school has created a unique program to reach this goal, although there are two components of the medical student program that are common throughout the schools: the programs offer mentorship to interested students and the programs offer clinical experiences to those students. The programs also employ a variety of other approaches, including discussion groups, exposure to research, networking opportunities, and visits to professional conferences.

So far, the programs have successfully recruited students into the field of pediatric psychiatry. To determine whether these successes are significant and to assess which components of the student programs are most effective, the Foundation has awarded the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) a grant to evaluate the program. Dr. Alex Kolevzon, Clinical Director and Associate Director of Residency Training, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, is facilitating the evaluation effort among the ten programs.

The Foundation’s hope is that the medical student programs adopt best practices from the evaluation, become self-sustaining fixtures at psychiatry departments, and, therefore, over time increase the number of child and adolescent psychiatrists.