Cheryl Kodjo

Promoting equity and reducing health disparities among racially/ethnically diverse adolescents: A position paper of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine

With this paper, five key domains of advocacy, clinical care and health promotion, education and health services delivery, workforce and professional development, and research are identified. All five require attention in order to reach the overarching goal of health equity for adolescents and young adults. SAHM believes that achieving health equity is related to its organizational mission and vision and is a key factor in driving excellence in adolescent health and medicine. SAHM will continue to expand its capacity, being introspective as an organization as well as make recommendations to others, in an effort to be collaborative and inclusive of professionals, programs, and systems that represent and serve the diverse populations for whom the Society advocates.

New Century Scholars: A Mentorship Program to Increase Workforce Diversity in Academic Pediatrics.

This article describes a program aimed to increase workforce diversity and underrepresented minority (URM) representation in academic pediatric medicine. The New Century Scholars (NCScholars) program is a core program in the Academic Pediatric Association, the largest national organization for academic pediatric generalists. The program selects URM pediatric (or medicine–pediatrics) residents who are interested in academic careers and provides each NCScholar with a junior and senior mentor, as well as travel grants to the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting where activities specific to the program are held, and provides ongoing mentorship and career counseling support. The authors discuss the origination, operation, and changes to the program over the first 10 years of its existence, as well as outcome data for the participants in the program. To date, 60 of the 63 NCScholars have finished residency and/or have made postresidency plans, and 38 of these URM pediatricians (63%) have entered academic careers. The authors suggest that this type of mentorship program for URM pediatric trainees can be used as a model for other specialties and medical organizations.

Adolescent pregnancy prevention: impact of siblings who are teen parents

Conclusions: While many adolescents report using contraception and condoms adolescents living in households with parenting siblings are more likely to have unmet health care needs. A high proportion of all adolescents report having ever been pregnant; those with parenting siblings have their own children 2 1/2 times more often than those without parenting teen siblings. These findings suggest a need for targeted interventions addressing secondary as well as primary pregnancy prevention. (excerpt)