The Pediatric Infectious Diseases (ID) / Global Health Research Training Pathway is a specialized fellowship designed for pediatricians pursuing clinical and research careers in childhood infectious diseases with a focus on global health. This combined pathway is integrated into the second and third years of a traditional three-year Pediatric ID fellowship, concentrating on research and scholarly activities.
Program Highlights
Graduates receive a Certificate in Global Health Research and meet the standards of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and ABP, preparing them for impactful careers in childhood infectious disease within global health contexts.
Dr. McAleese attended medical school at Georgetown University, and completed her combined medical training in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics with a certificate in global health at Medstar Georgetown in Washington, DC. She was inspired to pursue a medical career after her work on Lymphatic Filariasis in Leogane, Haiti with the University of Notre Dame. She continued her work on neglected parasitic infections while at Georgetown with her research on Chagas disease in transplant recipients. She is currently a clinical fellow in the pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. Her current research focus is understanding treatment outcomes of pediatric patients with Chagas disease in the Boston area, in addition to expanding screening programs in both pregnant women and children.
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Eleanor Semmes, MD, PhD is a pediatric resident who earned her BA in Political Economy and BS in Neuroscience at Tulane University and MD/ PhD at Duke University’s Medical Scientist Training Program. Her PhD research at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute focused on defining maternal-fetal immune responses to congenital CMV infection to guide vaccine development. Through the Duke Global Health Institute, she also completed a doctoral certificate and fieldwork with a pediatric oncology group in Mwanza, Tanzania to help improve clinical care, build local research capacity, and advance cultural awareness of childhood cancer. Dr. Semmes plans to integrate global health into her clinical training in residency and pediatric infectious diseases fellowship as well as future research endeavors related to her interests in early life immunity and vaccinology.
Geoffrey Guenther, MD, MPH is an Assistant in Pediatrics in the Division of Infectious Diseases and the lead faculty for Infectious Diseases education in the Margaret C. Ryan Global Health Program at Boston Children's Hospital, as well as an Instructor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. He collaborates closely with researchers at the Blantyre Malaria Project and Kamuzu University of Health Sciences in Blantyre, Malawi. His current research projects focus on tackling child health challenges in resource-limited settings in Malawi: improving the application of malaria rapid diagnostic tests and developing an algorithmic outpatient approach to children with fever in malaria-endemic communities. Dr. Guenther is also the recipient of several teaching awards and has launched numerous educational initiatives at Boston Children's Hospital, most recently collaborating on an Infectious Diseases curriculum for Pediatrics trainees at John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia, Liberia.
Dr. Sosa Soto attended medical school at Universidad Dr. Jose Matias Delgado in El Salvador, his birth country. As a medical student, he participated in an international collaboration with Washington University in St. Louis to characterize the intestinal microbiota of the inhabitants of a rural Salvadoran village. This experience allowed him to appreciate the paramount importance of global cooperation in scientific projects. After graduation, Dr. Sosa Soto completed his Pediatric Residency training with a Global Child Health certificate at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. Dr. Sosa Soto is pursuing a Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellowship at Boston Children’s Hospital. His current research focuses on describing the characteristics of children diagnosed with extrapulmonary tuberculosis in Bangladesh. He also has a passion for medical education, which has led him to collaborate with the training program for Pediatric Infectious Diseases Fellows in El Salvador at the Hospital Nacional de Niños Benjamin Bloom. Dr. Sosa Soto is working on expanding this collaboration with the leading pediatric hospital in El Salvador to foster further educational experiences for Salvadoran and US-based residents and fellows.
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