The Division of Cardiovascular Medicine Women’s Heart Health Program offers a one-year non-ACGME Clinical Postdoctoral Fellowship program.
This dedicated clinical postdoctoral fellowship training focuses on women’s heart health and trains fellows in the diagnosis and management of cardiovascular conditions unique to women so that they become leaders in women’s heart health and sex-/gender-based differences in cardiovascular disease. In addition, it 1) provides mentored research in women’s heart health according to the clinical, basic, and/or translational interests of the fellow and 2) prepares fellows to establish and/or contribute to a Women’s Heart Health clinic and promote evidence-based cardiovascular care of women with the goal of improving outcomes and equity of care.
It is well-established that there are differences between women and men in cardiovascular medicine, not only within conditions, such as prevention, heart failure, electrophysiology, and interventional cardiology, but across conditions, from the patient’s presentation, to their diagnostic work-up, and to their treatment. However, training within cardiovascular medicine tends to favor a one-size-fits-all teaching curriculum, inadvertently missing critical points related to diversity of care. The consequence is a well-documented disparity in outcomes between women and men, with women of all ages and ethnicities faring worse, in part, because they are not receiving the personalized care they require. Becoming an expert in women’s heart health and sex differences in cardiovascular medicine requires dedicated training as its own subspecialty. Our clinical postdoctoral fellowship program is intended to train experts who will be equipped to establish their own Women’s Heart Health program, improve the care and outcomes for women cardiovascular patients, and train the next generation of providers who will care for these women.
By the end of training, graduates from the Stanford Women’s Heart Health Clinical Postdoctoral fellowship will have achieved expertise in sex-specific care in preventive cardiology, cardiac behavioral medicine, heart failure, electrophysiology, valvular heart disease, interventional cardiology, cardio-gynecology and obstetrics, cardio-rheumatology, peripheral arterial disease, and cerebrovascular disease. They will also have received a solid education in establishing a clinical program, including institutional, financial, marketing, negotiating, fund-raising, team building, and leadership skills. This clinical postdoctoral fellowship will also enable Stanford University to further establish its national role as a center of excellence for creating policy and disseminating knowledge that will reduce needless disparities in cardiovascular health.
Finally, the graduating clinical postdoctoral fellow will be able to work seamlessly with other subspecialties within cardiovascular medicine to provide complementary clinical skills and increasingly necessary content expertise to optimize care for these patients.
Click here to visit Stanford Healthcare Women's Heart Health Care Page