The
National Home
for
People Advancing
Health Equity
AHEA provides practical support, professional recognition, and meaningful leadership opportunities for people committed to carrying this work forward.
There is still something worth building
This is a difficult moment for health equity work.
Funding is less stable. Language is more contested. Institutions are more cautious. Many people are being asked to do more with less, while others are searching for a way to remain connected to work they have spent years helping move forward.
But difficult times do not call for smaller ambition.
They call for stronger connection, stronger support, and structures durable enough to help the work continue.
The American Health Equity Association was created to help build that structure: a professional home where people can access practical resources, receive recognition for their experience and contributions, take on meaningful leadership roles, and help shape what comes next.
At AHEA, hope is not passive. It is built through connection, contribution, and the belief that people should not have to carry this work alone.
There is still a place for you in this work.
What membership makes possible
AHEA is designed to give people more than a connection to the field. Membership provides practical support for the work in front of you, credible opportunities to contribute, and a professional home built for what comes next.
Access
Use practical tools, trusted information, and member forums designed to help you navigate changing professional, organizational, and public environments.
AHEA helps members move from uncertainty to action—with support they can use between conferences, meetings, applications, and projects.
Recognition
Make your experience, work, and contributions more visible through an optional member profile and structured opportunities to be featured.
Every member may submit a Profile in Health Equity Practice or Case in Health Equity Practice.
Leadership
Take part in structured opportunities to guide, review, publish, collaborate, and help shape what comes next for the field.
Through national committees, leadership network, editorial roles, and other initiatives, AHEA gives members meaningful ways to lead - not simply observe the work from the sidelines.e sidelines.
Practical support for the work in front of you
AHEA’s member tools are built for the professional decisions, communication challenges, and evidence needs people are navigating right now.
Each tool is grounded in public health and health equity and designed to provide focused support members can use between conferences, meetings, applications, and projects.
Explore all member tools
Evidence to Practice Tool
Find and apply relevant public health evidence more efficiently, with focused searches of PubMed and guidance designed to help translate research into practice.
Career Positioning Tool
Reframe your experience, clarify your transferable value, and strengthen how you present yourself for evolving roles, sectors, and opportunities.
Strategic Messaging Tool
Refine personal, professional, and organizational language for complex and changing environments while preserving your intent, credibility, and strategic goals.
More than a place to belong.
A place to contribute.
AHEA creates structured opportunities for members to apply what they know, contribute to public-facing work, receive recognition for substantive contributions, and help shape what comes next for the field.
Applied community leadership
People’s Health Project is AHEA’s community-action initiative, helping turn lived experience into documented public evidence and organized action.
AHEA members may complete community health leadership training, join campaign teams, help develop Community Health Impact Reports, and contribute to public campaigns and selected published work. Community participation remains open more broadly, while formal training, leadership, certificate, and publication roles are available through membership.
American Journal of
Health Equity
The American Journal of Health Equity is being developed as an open-access, peer-reviewed journal for credible work that advances health equity research and practice.
The journal will embed equity in how knowledge is created, reviewed, and shared. As opportunities become available, AHEA members may submit manuscripts and apply for Editorial Board, peer-reviewer, and other journal contributor roles.
Learn about the Journal
State of Health Equity Report
The State of Health Equity Report will bring health measures, geographic comparison, and real-world context together to provide a clearer national picture of where inequities persist and how conditions are changing.
Produced independently by AHEA and informed by professional, community, campus, and place-based perspectives, the report will preserve important evidence in a durable public record. Members may contribute through research, review, field insight, leadership, and selected authorship opportunities.
Leadership opportunities
AHEA members can help guide national initiatives through committees and editorial bodies or serve as State, Community, or Campus Health Equity Leads through the AHEA Leadership Network.
These selective, limited-term roles create meaningful ways to contribute professional and place-based insight, connect local and national perspectives, and build recognized service to AHEA and the wider field.
Professional recognition
AHEA members have structured opportunities to make their experience, work, and contributions more visible across the field.
Members may submit a professional profile for consideration as a Profile in Health Equity Practice or submit a completed Case in Health Equity Practice documenting a project, approach, or practice-based lesson that others may be able to learn from and apply.
Explore recognition opportunities
A place to think through what comes next
Health equity professionals are navigating changing language, shifting priorities, constrained resources, and difficult decisions - often without a trusted place to think those challenges through with others who understand the work.
AHEA Member Strategy Forums will provide recurring spaces for members to discuss emerging conditions, exchange practical insight, and leave with greater clarity about the work in front of them.
These forums are designed to offer more than another presentation. They will create space for thoughtful conversation, cross-sector learning, and the kinds of connections that help people move forward with greater confidence.
Help make the state of the field visible
The Health Equity Pulse is AHEA’s ongoing national listening effort.
It gathers perspectives from people working across public health, healthcare, research, policy, community organizations, and related fields to better understand what they are experiencing, what is changing, and what support the work requires.
The Pulse helps bring individual experiences into a larger picture. Findings will inform AHEA’s priorities, programs, and future State of Health Equity reporting.
Participation is open to members and nonmembers.
Takes less than 3 minutes
You do not have to carry this work alone
This is a difficult moment—but it is not the end of the work.
There is still knowledge to share, leadership to offer, evidence to apply, community priorities to carry forward, and something stronger to build together.
AHEA gives members practical support for the work in front of them, credible recognition for what they contribute, and meaningful opportunities to help shape what comes next.
There is still a place for you in this work.