Cook County Health and Hospitals System Program

Program Identity & Fit

Cook County Health's dermatology residency is a small, safety-net program (4 residents/year) built around resident-run continuity clinics serving an exceptionally broad and complex disease spectrum, including care at the Cook County Jail and the CORE Center, one of the nation's largest HIV treatment centers. Clinical training emphasizes surgical proficiency (weekly procedures including Mohs), dermatopathology (in-house dermatopathologist plus rotations at Consolidated Pathology and Northwestern), and specialty clinics for hidradenitis suppurativa and biologic infusion, giving residents hands-on procedural and complex-medical-dermatology volume rather than a research-first identity. Scholarship is expected but framed as one component among clinical excellence, communication, and career-long learning, with protected time for AAD/ASDS meetings contingent on case submission. The program explicitly values self-motivated residents comfortable with underserved, incarcerated, and HIV-positive populations, interdisciplinary work (monthly psychiatry collaboration), and cultural/linguistic responsiveness (medical Spanish is common among residents).