The neonatal-perinatal fellowship program at Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine is a three-year training program that prepares the next generation of neonatologists to provide intensive care for premature babies or critically ill newborns.

This new program received initial accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the national accrediting body for post-M.D. training programs in the U.S. in April 2021. The neonatal-perinatal fellowship is approved for one new fellow each year, with the first fellow beginning in July 2022.

The Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine has five fellowship-trained neonatologists on its clinical faculty who care for patients at Hoops Family Children’s Hospital at Cabell Huntington Hospital, a 71-bed children’s hospital located within Cabell Huntington Hospital on Marshall University’s health sciences campus in Huntington, West Virginia.

Babies cared for in the hospital’s regional neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) often receive care for being born early or with a lower birth weight, typically related to multiple gestation or maternal conditions. The NICU has a busy service with between 600 and 700 admissions annually, including 80 transports from 29 counties in our surrounding Tri-State communities, making it an ideal setting to train future neonatologists.