The core curriculum, delivered in a three-hour morning session once a week, is designed to enhance and augment the knowledge gained during the first two years, and is directed towards life-long learning and skills, including critically appraising the medical literature and understanding health care for children in the context of local, state and federal policies. It focuses on the following specific skills:

The second, and major, component of the block is protected time for residents to focus on research projects, medical education projects, community advocacy experiences, and/or more in-depth exposure to clinical experiences. Residents meet individually with faculty mentors two or more months before the start of ADB to design their projects. Senior residents have used their ADB time in a wide variety of ways to explore career alternatives, either to start or complete a primary research project, or undertake a project that will round out their own training (and often contributes to the training of other residents). The diversity of ADB activities reflects the diversity of interests and career paths of our residents. Over the past five years approximately, the results from half of the projects have been presented at national meetings and/or culminated in a peer-reviewed publication. A paper (Vinci RJ et al. Pediatrics 2009;124:1126-1134) describing outcomes of the rotation has recently been published.