Behavioral Health Fellowship

Cahaba + UAB Behavioral Health Fellowship

This is a one-year post-residency fellowship designed to train family medicine physicians in integrated, primary care–based behavioral and mental health. Our goal is to cultivate leaders who are clinically excellent, emotionally attuned, and capable of teaching and modeling behavioral health integration in underserved and resource-limited settings.

Fellows will provide direct care across multiple outpatient sites, lead educational sessions, build a teaching archive, collaborate with counselors and care teams, and support resident wellness. This is a highly interdisciplinary fellowship rooted in our mission to care for the whole person—mind, body, and spirit—and to prepare future physician-educators to do the same.

Curriculum Highlights

Core Themes

• Primary care–based behavioral and mental health
• Addiction medicine, psychopharmacology, trauma-informed care
• Teaching and resident development
• Community-based care and systems navigation
• Collaborative care with both our psychiatry residency and our clinical behavioral health consultants

Teaching Structure

• Flipped Classroom Model: Weekly readings, bite-sized teaching blurbs, and monthly full-length lectures.
• Resident Education: Fellows may present in our Family Medicine Residency didactics on multiple mental health topics.
• Resource Development: Fellows will help build and maintain a behavioral health archive accessible to all Cahaba providers.

Thematic Curriculum (13 blocks):

Clinical Experience

Fellows work across Cahaba Medical Care locations in Jefferson, Bibb, Chilton County, and Perry counties.

Clinical duties include:

• Dedicated half-day behavioral health clinics
• Participation in MAT/Suboxone groups (Maplesville, Marion, Centreville)
• Quality improvement and ACEs screening projects
• Participation in Collaborative Care Meeting with our behavioral health counsellors and the psychiatry faculty

Schedule Structure

The fellow follows a repeating weekly schedule combining clinical care, didactics, psychopharmacology consults, suboxone group work, and time for curriculum development and mentorship.

Example schedule includes:

Eligibility

Applicants must:

• Be board certified or board eligible in Family Medicine
• Have completed an ACGME-accredited Family Medicine residency
• Be eligible to practice in Alabama (we cannot sponsor visas)

Application

Applications open: July 1, 2025

Deadline: November 30, 2025

Fellowship dates: July 2026 – June 2027

Submit the following

• Curriculum Vitae (CV)
• USMLE or COMLEX transcript
• Medical school diploma and transcript
• State medical license (if available)
• Three (3) letters of recommendation (including one from residency program director)
• 1–2 paragraphs describing:
• Your long-term career goals
• Your interest in behavioral health
• What you hope to gain from the fellowship
• Any previous behavioral health or addiction medicine experience

Send applications to:
Kristen Thrasher
Kristen.Thrasher@cahabamedicalcare.com