Addiction Medicine Fellowship (ACGME)

Welcome to the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Addiction Medicine Fellowship

The Kaiser Permanente Northern California Addiction Medicine Fellowship began in 2017 and is  ACGME accredited. We presently offer a one-year full time clinical track. Our addiction medicine fellowship is unique in that it is nested within an integrated health care system offering tailored prevention, assessment, and treatment of substance use disorders for more than 3 million members in Kaiser Permanente Northern California Health Plans. We offer a busy, training environment with  1:1 mentorship by board certified addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry faculty working in multidisciplinary treatment teams. In addition, our fellowship has closely partnered with Alameda Health Systems Addiction Medicine Program at Highland Hospital where the fellow will be learning about and practicing hospital and community based low barrier, state of the art comprehensive care that has been and continues to lead the country in addiction treatment.   Fellows will be thus equipped to be leaders, teachers, and expert clinicians in the expanding medical specialty of Addiction Medicine.

Clinical rotation sites for the fellows at present include hospital addiction consultation services, comprehensive addiction rehab programs, bridge clinics, comprehensive outpatient programs, continuity addiction clinics and the county drug courts and other stimulating rotations. These are both within and outside of Kaiser Permanente health system.

• Applications for fellowships beginning July 2022 must be submitted through ERAS. Submissions through ERAS begins in July 2021. Please refer to the ERAS website for specific dates and instructions. Required application materials include:
• Common Application Form (CAF)
• Personal statement
• One letter of recommendation from residency program director
• ECFMG certification (applicable to graduates of foreign medical schools)
• A Color Photo
• USMLE and medical school transcripts

Mission Statement

The mission of the Northern California Kaiser Permanente Addiction Medicine Fellowship is to develop Addiction Medicine specialists who are experts in understanding, communicating, diagnosing, and treating patients with addiction. In the context of the disease model, we believe addiction must be viewed as multi-faceted as possible. We believe cultural, societal, legal, economic, medical, psychiatric, traumatic, biochemical, and neurobiological aspects of addiction need to be considered to reduce stigma, increase access, and decrease the disease burden of substance use disorders for individuals, families and within the larger society.

Didactic Curriculum

The core curriculum includes educational lectures on assessment and treatment of patients with substance use disorders in the inpatient and outpatient setting, development of critical assessment of the literature, clinical leadership skills, and experience providing treatment in the interdisciplinary setting. The fellow is expected to attend, participate, and present in the weekly San Francisco VA addiction psychiatry seminar, the UCSF primary care addiction medicine bridge and buprenorphine conferences, and the national ACAAM weekly meeting. The fellow is also highly encouraged and given time to participate in the annual CSAM and ASAM conferences, as well as their board review conferences. Additionally, the fellow presents at Kaiser regional and local meetings throughout their fellowship.

Supervision and Mentoring

The fellow will be mentored in clinical rotations 1:1 by addiction specialist physicians, from addiction medicine and addiction psychiatry, throughout the year.  She/he will meet with the Program director weekly for mentoring throughout the fellowship. The fellow will be encouraged to select a topic within addiction medicine and conduct a review of the literature with the goal of presenting a “Grand Rounds” to the Addiction Medicine physicians throughout Northern California Kaiser Permanente. The fellow will be encouraged to prepare and submit a manuscript for publication on this review topic.

Contact Information

Addiction Medicine Fellowship Home Site Location:

Related Links

Kaiser Permanente Northern California Resident/Fellowship Program
Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME)
American Board of Addiction Medicine (ABAM)
American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM)
Association for Medical Education and Research in Substance Abuse (AMERSA)