Rudolph Jackson Sickle Cell Disease Fellowship Program

The St. Jude Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Center treats approximately 900 children with sickle cell disease each year. The center strives to provide state-of-the-art sickle cell care for patients and excellent research opportunities for fellows. St. Jude has three full-day sickle cell clinics that care for different age groups: infant/toddler, school-age and teenage patients. Each clinic provides comprehensive care supported by advanced practice providers, nurse case managers, child life specialists, an educator and a medical social worker. The center also serves as the hub for newborn screening referrals in western Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas.

Additional programs are a Stroke Prevention Program and a Pediatric to Adult Transition of Care Program. The team works closely with subspecialists, including nephrologists, cardiologists and pulmonologists with special expertise in sickle cell–related organ damage. In addition, fellows gain inpatient experience to learn how to manage acute complications of sickle cell disease.

Methodist Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center and Diggs-Kraus Sickle Cell Clinic for adults with sickle cell disease are integral parts of the Pediatric to Adult Transition of Care Program in the St. Jude Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center; St. Jude patients with sickle cell disease transition their adult care to these programs. The transition program ensures adolescents transition their health care for ongoing management of this complex chronic disease, and the transition clinic serves as a national model for other programs aiming to improve transition outcomes of this disease. Our partnerships with Methodist University Hospital, Regional One Hospital and the University of Tennessee also connect our faculty and fellows to an adult sickle cell population of approximately 2,000 adults. Fellows attend two half-day clinics a week at the Methodist Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center and the Diggs-Kraus Sickle Cell Clinic.

The program also collaborates with various other institutional programs. The Department of Psychology & Biobehavioral Sciences provides psychology and neuropsychology services for our patients with sickle cell disease. The chronic transfusion program has expertise in managing patients who receive chronic transfusions for sickle cell disease and complications associated with transfusions, such as iron overload and alloimmunization. Additionally, the program collaborates with the Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation & Cellular Therapy to offer curative therapies, including allogeneic bone marrow transplants and gene therapy clinical trials, to patients. The program also works with the Global Hematology Program, which focuses on improving the health of individuals with sickle cell disease worldwide.

St. Jude has a longstanding commitment to children with sickle cell disease. Scientists at the hospital have been researching this disease since the institution’s founding in 1962. The hospital is a leading center for sickle cell research, and it develops and participates in clinical trials evaluating new therapies for sickle cell disease. The Division of Experimental Hematology also investigates topics involving sickle cell disease, including stem cell biology and gene editing.

Since 2014, the program has initiated a lifetime cohort study for sickle cell disease, the Sickle Cell Clinical Research and Intervention Program (SCRIPP), which aims to study the long-term effects of the disease and its treatments. The study serves as a resource for faculty and fellows who want to study the characterization and outcomes of sickle cell disease or design new therapies.

St. Jude is not only dedicated to investigating, understanding and advancing the knowledge of various catastrophic childhood illnesses, but also is invested in improving clinical care for patients. The focus of these quality improvement initiatives has been to actively engage participants to partner with clinical practitioners, hospital administrators, patients and families to deliver equitable care to a diverse population, which will result in improved outcomes, such as improved remission, physical functioning, decreased hospitalization and serious adverse safety events. The quality improvement projects partner with multiple departments, and fellows are encouraged to join existing projects or propose their own. Motivated and interested fellows will have the opportunity to join the quality improvement teams and, with direction and mentorship, lead their own team. Fellows are encouraged to present results of these projects at national meetings and in peer-reviewed journals.