Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism Fellowship

Clinical Experience

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center is a 556-bed acute-care and tertiary care facility in Torrance that is owned and operated by Los Angeles County. It is a major teaching hospital for the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. Through its inpatient, emergency, and ambulatory care programs in the Department of Health Services (DHS), Harbor-UCLA provides health care services to 3 million residents of Southwestern Los Angeles County, including those who are medically under resourced. Harbor-UCLA provides subspecialty care to patients referred by community health providers through eConsult (DHS electronic referral system). Through affiliations with the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation on the same campus, and UCLA, Harbor-UCLA Medical Center has created and maintained an international reputation for academic excellence and research productivity. Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation is part of UCLA’s Clinical and Translational Research Institute (CTSI), whose mission is “to bring UCLA innovations to bear on the greatest health needs of Los Angeles and the nation.”

The Pediatric Endocrine consult service provides the fellow trainee with the opportunity to see, learn about, diagnose, and manage all categories of endocrine disease. All fellows participate in the following clinics: Endocrine, Diabetes, Be Forever Fit (obesity), Pituitary, Thyroid Fine Needle Biopsy. Fellows also enjoy the opportunities to attend Genetics Clinic and Reproductive Endocrinology.

Research Opportunities

Research facilities for faculty and fellows are located at the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA, on the same campus as the medical center. Resources include tissue-cell culture facilities, a biomedical mass spectrometry facility, molecular biology facilities, morphology facilities (including electron and confocal microsurgery), an animal surgical suite and vivarium, an Investigation Drug Service, and all other instrumentation for state of the art endocrine and metabolic research.

The UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute (UCLA CTSI) supports an outpatient Clinical and Translational Research Center. These facilities are available to facilitate clinical research at the medical center. This center employs specially trained nurses and staff who are accustomed to working with complex research protocols on a daily basis.

Several of our faculty are recipients of NIH or other independent research grants, and are conducting ongoing research in areas of childhood obesity and diabetes, fatty liver disease, lysosomal storage diseases, skeletal dysplasia, and osteopetrosis. Research support is available for pediatric fellows from the Department of Pediatrics in the form of seed funding.