TY  - JOUR
AU  - Salman, Zeena
AU  - Moreira, Daniel C
AU  - Ul Ain, Rahat
AU  - Hoveyan, Julieta
AU  - Resendiz, Alma Edith Benito
AU  - Rahmartani, Ludi Dhyani
AU  - Zhang, Anan
AU  - Amayiri, Nisreen
AU  - Bailey, Simon
AU  - Bouffet, Eric
AU  - Chan, Godfrey Chi-Fung
AU  - Liu, Anthony Pak-Yin
AU  - La Madrid, Andres Morales
AU  - Mushtaq, Naureen
AU  - Tsui, Karen
AU  - Ngcana, Thandeka Vuyiswa Zamansundu
AU  - Salazar, Mauricio Sanchez
AU  - Bhat K, Vasudeva
AU  - Cirt, Ramona
AU  - Somathilaka, Mahendra
AU  - Yang, Peiyi
AU  - Chinnaswamy, Girish
AU  - Dhall, Girish
AU  - Gupta, Tejpal
AU  - Jalali, Rakesh
AU  - Lassaletta, Alvaro
AU  - Osorio, Diana S
AU  - Shatara, Margaret
AU  - Upadhyaya, Santhosh A
AU  - Uppuluri, Ramya
AU  - Pfister, Stefan
AU  - Ybarra, Susan
AU  - DiNovis, Elizabeth
AU  - Rodriguez-Galindo, Carlos
AU  - Qaddoumi, Ibrahim
TI  - An innovative virtual fellowship leveraging global and regional mentorship to foster pediatric neuro-oncologists in low/middle-income countries.
JO  - Neuro-oncology advances
VL  - 7
IS  - 1
SN  - 2632-2498
CY  - Oxford
PB  - Oxford University Press
M1  - DKFZ-2026-00018
SP  - vdaf229
PY  - 2025
AB  - BackgroundMost children with central nervous system (CNS) tumors reside in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with limited availability of trained pediatric neuro-oncologists.Using a series of structured interviews of physicians who had served as global mentors or mentees in pediatric oncology, we identified mentorship, leadership, and clinical training as key components necessary to virtually train pediatric oncologists in LMICs to become leading pediatric neuro-oncologists while they remain in their home countries. Thus, the St Jude Global Virtual Pediatric Neuro-oncology Fellowship (VPNOF) was designed to incorporate mentorship with global and loco-regional mentors to aid in each fellow's career and institutional goal setting and clinical training involving virtual tumor boards and didactics and ad-hoc case discussions, enabling fellows to manage patients at their home institution. Fellows traveled to their mentors' institutions twice for four-week clinical rotations.In 2022 and 2023, eleven fellows were selected, representing 10 LMICs. The 2-year fellowship led to the establishment of multi-disciplinary approaches, increased patient volume, increased use of evidence-based practices, 33 abstract presentations, and publication of four journal articles.The VPNOF is an innovative approach leveraging global mentorship to train pediatric oncologists in resource-limited settings to become pediatric neuro-oncologists, which has led to the successful implementation of new practice paradigms to improve the quality of care for children with CNS tumors in LMICs.
KW  - CNS tumors (Other)
KW  - capacity building (Other)
KW  - low- and middle-income countries (Other)
KW  - neuro-oncology (Other)
KW  - pediatric (Other)
KW  - virtual fellowship (Other)
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:41473741
C2  - pmc:PMC12746595
DO  - DOI:10.1093/noajnl/vdaf229
UR  - https://inrepo02.dkfz.de/record/307513
ER  -