As one of only 16 U.S. medical schools offering Klingenstein Fellowships for medical students, KU School of Medicine-Wichita is providing a select group of future physicians with hands-on exposure in treating child and adolescent mental and behavioral health issues, one-on-one mentoring with faculty, nationwide networking and a boost in the path to competitive residency programs.

The student fellowships, which began in 2024, are one way KUSM-Wichita is addressing the dire shortage of trained specialists in child and adolescent psychiatry. In Kansas, 60% of the state’s children and adolescents have unmet mental health needs because of that shortage, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

The fellowships are offered through a Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation program, which is highly selective in choosing participating medical schools. The foundation’s mission is to improve understanding, treatment and access for children’s mental health.

“We are already seeing the program strengthen the workforce dedicated to children’s mental health,” said Cassie Karlsson, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and director of the KUSM-Wichita Klingenstein Fellowship program for medical students.

Of the first five fellows to graduate this past May, three matched into residency programs in psychiatry and the remaining two matched into child neurology and pediatrics residencies, respectively — programs that closely align with child and adolescent psychiatry, Karlsson said.

According to a study published in the Academic Psychiatry journal in February 2020, students from medical schools offering Klingenstein Fellowships had a higher rate of matches into psychiatry residency programs.

Tayita Abudu: Fellowship ‘played a big part’ in residency match

Tayita Abudu, M.D., MPH, now a psychiatry resident at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, said, “The Klingenstein Fellowship pretty much solidified my aspirations. I’d always wanted to go into psychiatry. (The fellowship) opened so many doors, not only in Wichita. … It allowed me to network with so many people (at the conference). The networking was one of the most fantastic parts of the fellowship.”

All Klingenstein fellows have the opportunity to attend the KTGF annual medical conference and submit proposals to the KTGF to present at the conference, which is hosted by one of the 16 participating schools.

Abudu, from Coffeyville, Kansas, was selected to make a presentation at the 2025 conference at Harvard University in Boston. She had conducted a research project on “Clinical Strategies and Challenges of Psychiatrists in Accra, Ghana.”

Abudu believes the fellowship and presentation experience “played a big part” in getting matched to the MUSC psychiatry residency program.

“It showed I was interested in pursuing research and academics in psychiatry … and they saw that I was also able to present that research in a scholarly way,” she said.

Open to all medical students

When the first call for Klingenstein Fellowship applications went out in 2024, Alicia Farino, M.D., hesitated to apply because she wasn’t planning to pursue a psychiatry residency. Her interest was in neurology.

Then she started getting texts from Abudu, one of her medical school peers, about these “super cool conferences” and other experiences she was having through her fellowship, Farino said.

Besides attending the KTGF conference and other conferences and symposiums, Klingenstein fellows also participate in KSKidsMAP TeleECHO virtual sessions focused on child and adolescent mental health with primary care physicians; accompany Karlsson to Heartspring, where she is the medical director, to observe treatment for children with severe neurological disorders; and receive mentoring.

Through mentoring experiences with both faculty and fellows of KUSM-Wichita’s two-year Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship Program, Klingenstein fellows get “VIP access,” said Shelly Small, MSEd, PMP, who is the fellowship program coordinator for addiction medicine and child and adolescent psychiatry.

“We invite the Klingenstein fellows to anything we are doing with the CAP fellows,” she said.

After discovering the Klingenstein Fellowships were available to all students and “on the advice of Tayita,” Farino applied and was accepted during the second application cycle.

“That’s a common misconception, that a student has to go into psychiatry,” Small said. The Klingenstein Fellowship program is open to first- through fourth-year students.

One purpose of the Klingenstein Fellowships, according to Small and the KTGF, is to expose medical students to children’s mental health research, treatment and advocacy.

For the 2026 KTGF medical conference at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, Farino was selected to make a presentation about a case study involving the treatment of two sisters who were diagnosed at the same time with a genetic mutation causing global developmental delays. The younger sister was successfully treated, likely because she was diagnosed at a younger age. Because her diagnosis came at a later age, the older sister didn’t respond successfully, Farino said.

The Klingenstein Fellowship provided Farino with additional exposure to the child and adolescent psychiatry faculty and the protocols and treatment for complex cases that she wouldn’t have received in a standard rotation or in the classroom, she said.

Farino, who also graduated in May, is in the integrated child neurology residency program with Children’s Mercy and the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City.

Above, right: Tayita Abudu, M.D., MPH

Next supplication cycle

Applications for the 2027 Klingenstein Fellowship program will be accepted in October, according to Small, with selections made by the Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences leadership in November. For more information, contact Small at ssmall2@kumc.edu or 316-293-3563.