Meet the Program Leadership

Jennifer H. Chuang, MD, MS
Program Director

Dr. Chuang was born and raised in South Jersey. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania and her medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. She completed a combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency at the University of Medicine of New Jersey – the New Jersey Medical School (now Rutgers) and then pursued her fellowship in adolescent medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, where she also received her Masters of Science in Patient Oriented Research. Following fellowship, Dr. Chuang was the Medical Director of Adolescent Inpatient Services at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where she was also on faculty at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. In 2019, Dr. Chuang joined St. Joseph’s as the Section Chief of Adolescent Medicine. Dr. Chuang has been recognized by the American Academy of Pediatrics, having received the first Emerging Leader in Adolescent Medicine Award in 2015. Dr. Chuang is on the Executive Committee of the New Jersey Chapter of the AAP (NJAAP) and is also Co-Chair of NJAAP Government Affairs Committee. In her free time she enjoys the outdoors with her spouse and 2 children at the Jersey Shore, the Pocono Mountains, and the picturesque towns and landscapes of Northern New Jersey. As a die-hard Springsteen fan, she also enjoys the music scene in Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia.

Michael Blechner, MD
Associate Program Director

Dr. Blechner was born and raised in Long Island, NY. He then went upstate to Binghamton University for college and travelled to Israel where he received his medical degree at Sackler University. He returned to NY to complete his pediatrics residency at North Shore-Long Island Jewish (now Northwell), which was followed by a fellowship in Pediatric Pulmonary at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center and in Sleep Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. When he is not rooting for his local sports teams (go Mets and Islanders!), he is relaxing with a good book or movie, or trying to keep his piano skills up to par.

Kate Guth, MD
Associate Program Director

Dr. Guth is a graduate of St. Joseph’s pediatrics residency program. She attended medical school at St. George’s University and completed a fellowship in Pediatric Hospital Medicine at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn. Her interests include high value care and evidence based medicine. Dr. Guth is a native of Baltimore, Maryland and loves crab cakes, football, and baseball. She now lives in Rockland County, New York with her cat, fiancé, and future stepdaughter and stepson.

Rinet Fernandes, MD
Assistant Program Director

Dr. Fernandes is an attending physician in the Primary Care Pediatric Clinic at the DePaul Center and is Co-Director of the Pediatric Residency Advocacy Program. She received her medical degree from St. Johns Medical College in Bangalore, India, where she also completed a pediatrics residency. After moving to the U.S., she completed her pediatrics residency here at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital and is board certified in pediatrics. Her professional areas of interest are primary care pediatrics, care of the medically complex child, community pediatrics and advocacy, and residency mentorship. In her free time she enjoys gardening, “I love to spend time planting and nurturing the plants and watching them grow. Pediatricians are like gardeners in their own way. They use the inherent landscape and, according to the terrain of their plots and their own creativity, they foster the plants in a variety of ways and help them grow.”