HIV Medicine Fellowship

Our HIV Medicine Fellowship is a Texas Medical Board approved program that provides rigorous clinical training in all aspects of HIV outpatient care, with a focus on primary care but also with specialty rotations in hepatitis C co-infection, metabolic complications, and office dermatology.

CLINICAL TRAINING

Primary care clinic: The fellow will spend four half-days per week in the care of HIV infected adults as primary care provider, under the supervision (as needed) of our HV specialists. This will take place at Thomas Street Health Center, a freestanding HIV clinic a county clinic that serves the economically disadvantaged population in Houston. In 2013, TSHC cared for 5,810 HIV-infected individuals with a total of 798 new patients half of them antiretroviral-treatment naïve and 70% with CD4 cell count < 500 cell/mm³. The primary care clinic experience will be for the entire duration of the fellowship, which will allow for continuity of care.

Specialty clinics: There are a large number of specialty clinics available for patients at Thomas Street Health Center. We anticipate a rotating schedule of attendance in these clinics for the fellow. Because hepatitis C co-infection is such an important feature of today’s HIV epidemic, the fellow will attend this half-day clinic every week for the entire fellowship.

DIDACTIC TRAINING

Weekly HIV Case Conference.

Our biweekly conference is attended by ID UT faculty and fellows. Presentations are clinically oriented, and cases are presented by the HIV fellow and rotating medical students. All aspects of the HIV care continuum will be covered during the one-year cycle. Cases presented are from the clinical panels of the fellow or attendings. Selection of cases to present are guided by the faculty. After the case presentation and discussion, the fellow presents a short literature review.

RESEARCH

There is an abundance of clinical and translational research opportunities for fellows in HIV and/or Hepatitis C under the supervision of Dr. Roberto Arduino, Dr. Ben Barnett, Dr. Jordan Lake and Dr. Karen Vigil. Our faculty has excellent track records of mentoring trainees conducting HIV/AIDS research. Dr. Roberto Arduino is the site leader of the Houston site of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG).