It is definitely possible to apply to more than one track. I know of at least a couple of people last year who interviewed for both tracks on the same trip. The PD and APD who runs the community health track are very open to people learning more about the programs through interviews.
On the original question, I'm a 4th year student doing almost all of my peds rotations at CNMC, and I've been very impressed. Their residents are top notch and the program is generally very supportive of residents--lots of camaraderie among residents too. There is dedicated didactic time where chiefs hold the pagers of all the residents. There are "resident assistants" whose job it is to schedule follow-up and so forth for discharge planning (and they know back routes, so your patients actually get appointments within a reasonable period of time). There is a night float system for most inpatient rotations (not for NICU, PICU, Neuro, Cards, and our affiliated community hospital). You can have dedicated research time (REACH) for one afternoon per week (protected time/no clinical responsibilities). The hospital is expanding/renovating, and >1/2 the units are now in the new building which is beautiful. All documentation, orders, labs, and radiology are electronic on the inpatient side, though the bugs are still being worked out of some of the systems. The breadth of pathology is enormous (lots of international travelers/visitors, large referral area, lots of complex cases) and there's also a good mix of bread and butter (CNMC is the primary hospital for a large portion of the lower-income areas of the Washington area, so we get a pretty good number of asthma, dehydration, etc.).
On the not so good side, I would say the cost of living in Washington is very high (at least compared to what I'm used to). The hospital is not very public transportation accessible if that's something that's important to you. There isn't a huge amount of community hospital experience (I think two months in PL-2 is all you get, but I'm not sure), but you definitely see the pathology at the mother ship.
Overall, I really like the program. If they could just transport CNMC a little further west, I'd probably be staying there for the next few years, but as it is, it's just too far from home for my wife and I.
