Goals and Contents of Research Fellowship

The primary goal of the research fellowship is to train primary care physicians to become physician scientists. We expect fellows to conduct 1-2 research studies, publish 2-3 papers, and prepare a competitive NIH grant during their 2-3 year fellowship. Fellows are encouraged to take courses in epidemiology, statistics and research methods, with many fellows choosing to complete a masters degree in population health or public health. Fellows are expected to spend 70-80% of their time doing research and writing papers and grant proposals. We hope that by the end of the fellowship, each fellow has obtained an NIH (National Institutes of Health) or other substantive grant that they can take with them to an academic faculty position.

Dr. Barrett is the director of the fellowship, and continues to have an active medical practice. He is a tenured associate professor in the department of family medicine. He has authored more than 30 articles in peer reviewed journals, and has presented invited lectures in dozens of settings. Dr. Barrett was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Generalist Faculty Physician Scholar, with efforts aimed at defining and measuring clinical significance. He led efforts developing and validating the Wisconsin Upper Respiratory Symptom Survey, an illness-specific quality-of-life outcome measure. Currently he is directing an NIH-funded randomized controlled trial testing echinacea, doctor patient interaction, and placebo effects among people with acute upper respiratory infection.

There are a number of faculty in the medical school and in other schools in the university who serve as mentors for the fellowship. These include Drs. Ellen Wald, Bruce Edmonson, and Elizabeth Cox in Pediatrics, Drs. Mark Linzer, Laura Zakowski, and Mae Hla in the Department of Medicine, Drs. Alexandra Adams, Mike Fleming, John Frey and Jim Davis in Family Medicine, Drs. Greg Landry, David Bernhardt and Kathleen Carr in Sports Medicine, Dr. Betty Chewning in Pharmacy, and Dr Javier Nieto in Population Health.

We encourage all fellows to have 2-3 mentors to help them with their fellowship. Most of the prior fellows have had mentors from other universities and some from other countries. Establishing long-term mentoring relationships is considered one of the primary goals of the program.