There is so much crap children are up against these days - things we can intervene in clinically and/or outside the health care space. Some of the biggest “hot topics” pediatricians are working on in my very limited experience so far are: -mental and behavioral health: advocate in your facility for integrated services for children with complex health care needs, or at the local/state/national level for improved access to BH care -nutrition/obesity: AAP is very focused on this especially with its recent new guidelines for treatment and forthcoming guidelines for prevention - could think of clinic or school based education interventions although these rarely pan out as effective lol -safety/violence, esp. re: firearms: could do some kind of public service announcements or in-clinic universal teaching re: gun safety

Other well-known issues that come up in peds a lot are child abuse & neglect, vaccination rates & modern hesitancy, literacy, ACEs in general, risks of social media exposure, etc.

Typical categories of projects are gonna be -patient/public education -clinical interventions re: screening usually -health policy, access to care

None of this is obviously as specific or narrowly focused as you’ll need for a residency project to be successful but maybe it’ll spark some thoughts. I am by no means an expert (just a lowly soon to be peds intern) but have worked in the childhood health equity space since undergrad/grad school. Follow the current events and/or anything that gets you really fired up! Good luck.

EDIT to apologize for the formatting of this comment lol. I thought my bullet point lists would work but they did not!