Development of program requirements for obesity medicine fellowship training in the U.S

Subspecialty fellowship training programs typically adhere to program requirements for graduate medical education for their field, which are established by accreditation organizations. However, US-based obesity medicine fellowships currently lack this guidance. Therefore, our objective was to develop and validate subspecialty fellowship program requirements for both adult and pediatric obesity medicine in the US.

A work group from the Obesity Medicine Fellowship Council (OMFC) was convened to define program requirements for obesity medicine (OM) fellowships, including standards for curricular and clinical experiences during training. Draft program requirements for adult OM and pediatric OM fellowships were developed through an iterative consensus group process with repeated cycles of drafting and revising by an expert work group who then gained input from the American Board of Obesity Medicine and leadership from all OMFC-recognized fellowship programs. The draft documents were subsequently revised and then validated through a national survey to all US-based OM fellowship programs, where adult OM fellowships evaluated the adult OM program requirements and pediatric OM fellowships evaluated the pediatric OM program requirements. Respondents were asked to 'approve'/'not approve' each proposed section with space for comments. An agreement of at least 75% among respondents was set as the threshold a priori for retaining a program requirement.

Representatives from all adult and pediatric OM fellowship programs participated in the survey (n = 31). All items met the minimum threshold of ≥75% approving the requirement for both adult and pediatric OM fellowship programs. Comments for revisions on specific elements were primarily related to changes in language and formatting rather than conceptual underpinnings.

A group consensus method strengthened by inclusion of a national survey of OM fellowship program directors resulted in carefully-developed and broadly-vetted program requirements. These OM fellowship program requirements offer educators and trainees a roadmap to develop comprehensive OM training.