The 2023 application period for the Public Voices Fellowship is now closed. If you would like to be informed when the next cycle opens, please fill out this brief form.

Overview

Through this year-long fellowship, 20 thought leaders in public health, health services research, and health policy receive training and support to elevate their voices and amplify their expertise in today’s most crucial health justice conversations. Participants will use these skills to shape their fields and foster crucial conversations to drive the HSR and health policy enterprise toward higher impact, equitable research. The Public Voices Fellowship is a national initiative to change who writes history and create a more just world. Accordingly, the majority of the cohort will be historically excluded and underrepresented voices, including women and people of color.

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Fellowship Details

Through the Public Voices Fellowship, AcademyHealth and The OpEd Project aim to bring new, diverse voices into the public conversation and highlight the need for more innovative approaches to address systemic and structural barriers in health and health services research. As voices for science innovation, fellows are encouraged to imagine and advocate for more inclusive and representative approaches to formulating research questions, creating incentive structures, engaging partners, training researchers, working with data, and disseminating findings.

The fellowship curriculum explores authority, equity, innovation, and action in an unfair world. Fellows will explore how credibility works, how ideas spread, when and why minds change, and how ideas play out over time and space.

The program includes four virtual workshops and one-on-one coaching by leading journalists and editors. All participants commit to writing at least two opinion pieces (and hopefully many more) during their fellowship. Attendance at all workshops, continuously and in full, is required – applicants must save the dates in order to apply. All convenings will be held remotely. There is no cost to participate.

  • Up to 20 fellows
     
  • Year-long program
     
  • Applicants MUST commit to and save the following dates for the three (3) virtual and one (1) in person convenings:
    • Session 1: a 3-day virtual kickoff convening 
      • Wednesday-Friday, November 29-December 1, 2023 from 12:00 - 3:30 p.m. ET
    • Session 2: a 2-day virtual workshop
      • Thursday and Friday, February 15-16, 2024 from 12:00 - 3:30 p.m. ET
    • Session 3: a 2-day virtual workshop
      • Thursday and Friday, April 25-26, 2024 from 12:00 - 3:30 p.m. ET
    • Session 4: One, full day, in person session in Baltimore, MD
      • Friday, June 28, 2024 from 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. ET. Travel support is provided.
         
  • Dedicated editors (top journalists) provide regular, one-on-one support/editing/coaching
     
  • Access to ongoing mentoring for the fellowship year

Application Deadline: Monday, October 9, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. ET

Selection

We are looking for new voices in community-based organizations, civil society, nonprofits, academia, and the private sector, including advocates, entrepreneurs, community and business leaders, scientists, educators, and writers, among others.

We seek leaders working at the intersection of public health, communication, and social justice, with a demonstrated desire and ability to contribute to public dialogue on making health services research more relevant and actionable for all. Areas of focus could include big data, funding practices and avenues, publication processes, racial justice, local, national or global policy, or many others.

Fellows will be chosen through a competitive selection process. We are committed to building a diverse cohort. We will consider a variety of factors, including but not limited to gender, race/ethnicity, age, geography, area of expertise, work history, and experience.

More About the Fellowship

The Public Voices Fellowship is a partnership between AcademyHealth and The OpEd Project.

  • As the professional home and leading national organization for health services researchers, policymakers, and health care practitioners and stakeholders, AcademyHealth – together with its members – increases the understanding of methods and data used in the field, enhances the professional skills of researchers and research users, and expands awareness. AcademyHealth advances the field by acting as an objective broker of information, bringing together stakeholders to address the current and future needs of an evolving health system, inform health policy and practice, and translate evidence into action. This Fellowship is part of a family of projects designed to move health services research and health policy toward higher impact, more equitable research by addressing systemic and structural barriers and imagining more effective approaches to our research questions, incentive structures, partners, training, data, and dissemination strategies.
     
  • The OpEd Project is a think tank and leadership organization that expands history by amplifying the ideas and public impact of new and necessary voices, including women of all backgrounds. The OpEd Project is a community of thought leaders, journalists, commentary writers and activists who proactively share skills, knowledge and connections across color, creed, class, age, ability, gender, orientation, and beyond. The OpEd Project believes the best ideas, regardless of where they come from, should have a chance to be heard and to change the world.
     
  • Working with universities, think tanks, foundations, nonprofits, corporations and community organizations across the nation and around the world, The OpEd Project scouts and trains under-represented experts (especially women) to take thought leadership positions in their fields in order to accelerate solutions to the world’s biggest problems--problems that cannot be solved justly or sustainably without a diversity of voices, expertise, experience and identity. The OpEd Project connects Public Voices Fellows with an international network of high-level media mentors; and it vets and channels the best new ideas and experts directly to media gatekeepers across all platforms.  

What is Success? 

We are more interested in creating impactful outcomes than simply providing a service. Our goal is 100% success: every fellow commits to producing at least two written op-eds. We also envision fellows taking a public stand in other ways, e.g., speeches, radio/TV appearances, podcast interviews, proposals for new initiatives or businesses, and more and that these will greatly accelerate their impact as thought leaders helping to shape history. Longer-term, we aim to build a thriving and connected community of Public Voices Fellows at AcademyHealth in partnership with The OpEd Project.

Frequently Asked Questions

These FAQs relate to all Public Voices Fellowships managed by The OpEd Project.