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Welcome From the Program Leadership

Welcome From the Program Leadership

Thank you for your interest in our program! Our priorities include:

  • Diversity, equity, and inclusion
  • Trainee wellness/empathy in medicine
  • Outstanding clinical training
  • Opportunities for research, education, and leadership

Our residents graduate well equipped to pursue primary care in urban or rural settings, subspecialty fellowship, hospitalist medicine, or global health. We strive to educate and support residents who feel connected to meaning in medicine while practicing at the very highest standard of care.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We celebrate the diversity of our city and state and condemn racism. We are committed to the self-reflection and leadership that creates an anti-racism culture in our program and our hospitals. We value inclusion, diversity, and equity, and are committed to undoing white supremacist structures and policies that contribute to racial disparities in recruitment, research, education, and patient care. We recognize that the University of Utah resides on land that has always been Indigenous land, namely of the Goshute and Northwestern Shoshone peoples, and that what is now called Utah has always been the land of the Navajo, Paiute, Ute, Goshute, and Northwestern Shoshone. We are grateful for our partnerships with the U of U American Indian Resource Center and Indian Health Services.

We are grateful to provide care for Utah’s thriving communities of color at our Med-Peds continuity clinic sites, Westridge and Redwood Health Centers, which serve as medical homes for many of the more than 200,000 immigrant and 60,000 refugee patients living in Salt Lake County. Our residents also have opportunities to work with the International Rescue Committee throughout their training as part of their longitudinal advocacy rotation. The linguistic diversity of our region offers residents the opportunity to speak with patients in the most common languages apart from English in Salt Lake, including Spanish, Mandarin, Navajo, and Tongan. One in four children in Salt Lake County speaks a language other than English at home, and more than 30 languages are spoken by children in Salt Lake public schools.

​​​​​​​Wellness/Empathy in Medicine

Our 12-person cohort (3 residents per class) offers a close-knit learning environment, while also connecting residents to our extensive alumni network across the country. Our Med-Peds family has many opportunities to bond through activities like the annual Med-Peds camping trip in the Uinta Mountains, Halloween costume parties, and holiday gift exchange and hot drink parties. We host monthly journal clubs in residents' homes that always combine a research article and humanism essay.

All interns are offered the option to participate in the U of U’s Graduate Medical Education Wellness Elective, which provides two weeks of protected time to explore concepts such as mindfulness, narrative medicine and poetry, peer support, psychological safety, identity, and anti-racism. All interns in the U of U system receive the option for opt-out counseling in their intern year through the GME Wellness Office. Additionally, the new X+Y schedule ensures at least one full weekend off each month during intern year. 

Our program also affords flexibility in scheduling and elective development. After their first year, residents can choose when to switch between Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, and many residents have chosen to create their own electives, such as a month focused on competency in supporting LGBTQIA health.

Clinical Excellence

Our residents benefit from the combined strengths of two exceptional departments and hospitals. The U of U Department of Pediatrics is one of the largest pediatric departments in the country, and Primary Children’s Hospital, with its five state catchment area of over 1 million children, is a nationally ranked children’s hospital. The Department of Internal Medicine has been committed to high quality patient care, education, and research for over 75 years, and the University of Utah Hospital, also a high volume referral center, has been voted in the Top 10 Vizient Hospitals for quality and safety every year since 2009. 

Our program also offers rigorous training beyond Salt Lake City, with rural electives available in Anaconda, MT, Tooele, UT, Indian Health Services sites in Shiprock, NM, and Chinle, AZ, and Utah Navajo Health System sites in Blanding and Montezuma Creek, UT. We also have a long history of partnerships and rotations available in global sites such as Rwanda, India, Nepal, and Colombia. 

​​​​​​​Research, Education, and Leadership

We work to support the interests and goals of each resident. With a research budget of more than $500 million, the University of Utah has ample opportunities for investigation, from basic science to clinical research. Our resident research has included topics such as natural language processing to facilitate holistic review in recruitment to multi-site national efforts to improve transitions of care for patients with spina bifida.

Our accessible faculty are committed to teaching, whether in clinic or at journal club. Our residents are also passionate about medical education, and have created an academic month elective that combines an evidence-based clinical practice and residents-as-teachers curricula, taught by faculty from across the University. Our quarterly Clinic Learning Afternoons are protected time for all our residents to gather and learn about topics such as procedures, communication, EMR efficiency, refugee/immigrant health, and identity, race, and power.

There are many opportunities for leadership within our hospital system and our state, including serving as AAP delegate, representatives on medical school and resident curriculum committees, or as part of the Pediatrics Anti-racism Working Group or Language Inclusivity Work Group.

We look forward to meeting you and introducing you to our program in the Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains! We feel lucky to live in a place that combines views of the mountains from almost every hospital window and outdoor recreation minutes away with a city that has a vibrant food, music, and art scene. We hope you’ll love it too!

Casey Gradick, Med Peds Program Director
Casey Gradick, MD, MPH
Program Director