Is US citizenship required for most fellowship programs?!?

[coralfangs]

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I'm a Canadian going to a US school (MS3).
I started thinking about residency recently. Well, I've set my eyes on peds but I am trying to decide whether I want to stay in US or return to Canada for residency/fellowship.
One issue I notice on the possibility of doing a fellowship program in the states is that quite a few of them strictly require US citizenship/ permanent resident status.
What's your view on this?

 

[PEA]

If I'm not mistaken, NIH funding is reserved for US citizens. In other words, if the fellowship program you are interested in has NIH funding for research, they cannot take you.

You also need to be careful with doing residency in the US. Canada requires that you match year for year in your residency and most of the residencies in the US do not match Canadian residencies.
General peds in the US is 3 years but is 4 years in Canada so you must do a fellowship if you do residency in the US in order to match the number of years. (In Canada, if you do a residency and fellowship in peds, they take your 4th year of general peds and start your fellowship so the years will match up if you do a residency/fellowship in the US.)

This is only pertinent if you come on a J-1 visa. Your province is in control of your statement of need required for a J-1 visa. If your 'plan' doesn't allow you to be certified in Canada by the end of it all, they probably won't issue you a statement of need, thus no J-1. There are many hoops to jump through so you might start talking to the medical council of your province now.

I think I posted way more than what you asked for 🙄

 

[coralfangs]

*bow down*

that IS more than I asked for but man do I need to get start thinking about all these things.
Thank you!

 

[oldbearprofessor]

If I'm not mistaken, NIH funding is reserved for US citizens. In other words, if the fellowship program you are interested in has NIH funding for research, they cannot take you.

I don't wish to provide legal advice on SDN, but this is not correct. Training grants, which do not usually provide much fellowship support (but may), can be limited to citizens and green card holders. Other types of NIH research support are not limited to US citizens in general. Many NIH grants have PIs in other countries who are not Americans. Most fellowships do not use this as a criteria for selecting fellows. They MAY prefer H compared to J Visa holders and MAY prefer Green Card holders to either, but few if any pediatric fellowships are limited to US citizens.

 

[PEA]

Our program will enter the match and we will use ERAS. At the current time, we can only consider applications from U.S. citizens or permanent residents holding green cards, as funding is usually from federal training grants.

I stand corrected OBP, although, there are many programs that have a quote similar to the one I took off the University of Iowa Gastroenterology fellowship site above.