Second Year Fellowship Opportunities

Elder Capacity Assessment and Mistreatment (ECAM) Fellowship

This one year fellowship is the first of its kind. No other such fellowship exists except at the flagship program at UTHealth Houston in the heart of the world’s largest medical center. This brand new fellowship was approved by UTHealth Houston’s Graduate Medical Education Committee in 2024 and is currently pending approval by the Texas Medical Board (TMB). In the future, fellowship approval will also be sought from the American College of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME).

In Adult Medicine, there was no formalized fellowship training in Elder Capacity Assessment or Elder Mistreatment anywhere in the country. In contrast, in Pediatric Medicine, Child Abuse Pediatrics has been a well-established and well-respected field for many years, with a corresponding 3-year ACGME fellowship in numerous locations throughout the country.

This fellowship will train physicians with a background in the medical care of adults to perform, document, and interpret a patient’s decisional and executive abilities comprehensively in forensic capacity assessments, as well as how to review medical records and Employee Misconduct Registry (EMR) cases for evidence of adult mistreatment, testify and give deposition in civil and criminal courts, participate in and lead multidisciplinary teams and their members, complete scholarly activities in this field of medicine, advocate for vulnerable patients, and eventually teach and train others to perform all of the above functions.

This training opportunity is available to physicians who have completed a ACGME residency in Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Emergency Medicine, Neurology, or Psychiatry, or a fellowship in Geriatric Medicine following Internal Medicine or Family Medicine residency. Highly qualified and highly interested applicants with other residency training backgrounds will be considered on a case-by-case basis for interview and acceptance. At this time, we are unable to accept International Medical Graduates or those requiring visa sponsorship. USMLE or COMLEX-USA 1, 2, and 3 must be completed and passed for consideration.

Accepted fellows will complete a year of clinical training, spending the majority of their year learning alongside nationally recognized UTHealth Houston Geriatrician experts in elder mistreatment, forensic capacity assessment, medical record case review, and expert witness testimony. Clinical time will also be spent weekly with multispecialty experts in fields related to elder mistreatment and capacity assessment, including Adult Protective Services, law enforcement, legal teams, Forensic Nursing, Neuropsychologists, Forensic Pathologists / Medical Examiners, Neurologists, Psychiatrists, and more. Clinical fellows will have dedicated research time to work closely with the above team members and our UTHealth Houston Gerontologist researchers, as well.

Please see sample schedule below:

Application and interview season is anticipated to open in 2026, so please check back soon for more details. Feel free to send your questions and interest to fellowship program director, Dr. Julia Hiner.

Thank you!