Parkland Health Equity Fellowship

Arthur Hong, MD

Associate Professor and Director of Health Equity Fellowship

"The Parkland Health Equity fellowship is a unique launchpad for future clinical leaders who are committed to improving care for the underserved.

We are looking for individuals who are brimming with ideas, and who are eager to use the best available evidence to identify and evaluate solutions for the systematic improvement of health and health care.

We have created a two-year program for promising clinicians to develop skills in collaborative leadership and problem-solving. Fellows will complete a series of projects that lead to writing products – for both academic and non-academic outlets. Fellows will tap into a network of health system leaders; clinical and research experts, and other mentors from across Parkland Health, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area to grow their ability to constructively lead through challenges and mobilize innovations that move the needle towards the goal of health equity.”

Health Equity Didactics

Fellows will complete a series of didactics and seminars tailored to their interest and background. Foundational topics such as academic writing, public speaking, the healthcare financing system and clinical innovation in safety-nets will be recurring with additional topics added as needed. Recent didactics include:

Health Policy, Health Systems & Safety Nets by Fred Cerise, MD
Healthcare Innovation: Principles of Health Equity by Kavita P. Bhavan, MD, MHS, FIDSA
Food as Medicine by Jaclyn Albin, MD
Hospital at Home by Monal Shah, MD and Alissa Tran, PharmD, BCCCP
Care for the Homeless by Donna Persaud, MD, MBA
Ethics and Surrogate Decision Making for Unrepresented Patients by Jennifer Wimberly, MD, MA, HEC-C
Health-Related Social Needs by Sheryl Mathew, PhD, LCSW
Pulmonary Disparities and Language Concordant Care by Govind Krishnan, MD
Maternal Health Disparities by Robert Martin, MD
Data Science/Informatics: Business Intelligence (BI) and the Future of AI by Michael Harms, MSBA and Virali Soni, MBA
Cardiovascular Disparities by Sandeep Das, MD, MPH
Value Based Initiatives in a Safety Net System by Kristin Alvarez, PharmD

In addition, fellows can take advantage of other classwork to meet their training needs, including statistical methods and epidemiology, either locally or through other institutions.

Literature Evaluation

A key part of producing strong research will be learning from published literature. Fellows will critically review published articles and present in a variety of informal settings to our team while learning about datasets, methods and topics of interest.

Parkland Health Equity Symposium

Parkland Health will host an annual Health Equity Symposium each fall. This will be a forum to present current fellows’ work, invite nationally recognized leaders in health equity, and learn about other work in health equity and care delivery innovation across Parkland, UT Southwestern and the wider community.

National Conferences

Fellows will present their work at least once a year at a variety of national conferences such as America’s Essential Hospitals annual meetings, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement Forum, the Academy Health Annual Research Meeting and the Society for General Internal Medicine annual meeting.

Fellowship Team

The faculty and staff at the Center for Innovation and Value at Parkland are available to support fellows. Data and analytic resources are available through the Research and Scholarship Section in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern.

Embedded Operational Partnership: Partner directly with clinical and community stakeholders to redesign care models improving outcomes and equity.
Education as a Strategic Lever: Integrate learners into active improvement work, ensuring educational efforts yield operational benefits.
Portfolio of Innovation Initiatives: Leads project like uninsured care redesign and value-based care pilots serving as learning environments.
Sustainable Model for Equity: Align education with institutional goals to scale equity-focused innovation into clinical practice sustainably.

Clinical Time

Fellows will be expected to maintain a small amount of clinical effort during their two years to mature as clinicians and as a window into ongoing issues in clinical care.

Application Guidelines

We will accept up to two fellows per year. Applications are open from May 1 until July 31. Virtual interviews will be conducted during August and September. In-person interviews will continue in October, and acceptances will be communicated by early November.

Please Note: Fellowships will begin July 2027 until June 2028.

All documents below must be sent to IMHealthEquity@utsouthwestern.edu:

Curriculum vitae
Letter of Interest (no more than two pages)
Two Letters of Recommendation

Meet Our Fellows

Natalie Cohen, MD

Parkland Health Equity Fellow

“I came to the Health Equity Fellowship as an OB/GYN and minimally invasive gynecologic surgeon with a deep commitment to improving care for underserved patients.

At this institution, equity is built into our mission and is woven into how care gets delivered every day. The fellowship gives me the tools, mentorship, and protected time to turn questions and interventions into rigorous scholarship. I'm currently leading projects at the intersection of access and outcomes: examining how insurance status shapes treatment pathways, investigating areas for intervention in disparities for benign gynecologic conditions, and learning research methodology through my work with the Center for Innovation and Value at Parkland. Beyond my own projects, the fellowship incorporates didactics and site visits, which have given me exposure to the full breadth of innovative work happening across Parkland. New to the fellowship this year has been a collaboration with KFF, where I've had the opportunity to gain knowledge in health policy as well as begin to develop a policy research project of my own. What I enjoy most is how the fellowship has helped me see health equity not only as a value, but also as a methodology — and how this work can be sustainable, making care better for patients. I'm grateful to be part of a program that honors both the science and the humanity of this work.”

Anisha Ganguly, MD, MPH

2022 - 2024 Parkland Health Equity Fellow

"My experience as the inaugural health equity fellow at Parkland Health married my two identities as a primary care clinician and health services researcher, rooted in a common commitment to social justice in medicine and public health.

The opportunity to work as an embedded post-doctoral fellow with the Center of Innovation and Value and Parkland helped me explore a variety of research and programmatic projects to improve the quality of care and equitable delivery of innovations to the highest need patients, the patients served by Parkland Health. CIVP is a unique, interdisciplinary lab, and I was lucky to launch my career with that team.

Upon graduating from my fellowship, I was recruited as a clinician investigator at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I am building a robust research program on health-related social needs and cancer screening, all of which derives from the formative experiences I had at Parkland. I continue to work with CIVP on ongoing projects and remain committed to their mission of innovating within the healthcare safety-net to improve health outcomes for all."

Dr. Ganguly's two-year pilot fellowship at Parkland resulted in:

13 abstracts presented at local and national scientific meetings
14 peer-reviewed publications
Two externally funded grants, leading to a career development award application to the National Institutes of Health
One capstone presentation to leadership (UTSW/GIM, CTSA, and CIVP)
Leadership of Parkland Morbidity and Mortality (M&M) conferences, including a session for the Board of Governors

Published Works