Conference Scholarships for APHA's 2024, 2025, 2026 Annual Meetings to Support Underrepresented Students in Environmental Health - Project Summary/Abstract The American Public Health Association (APHA) is a large organization with over 25,000 members. APHA holds annual meetings to convene 1000s of new and longtime public health leaders working towards health equity. The 151st Annual Meeting will be held from November 12-15, 2023 in Atlanta, GA. The theme for this year’s conference, with an anticipated attendance of over 12,000 in total, is “Creating the Healthiest Nation: Overcoming Social and Ethical Challenges.” With future themes to be determined, the 152nd Annual Meeting will be held in Minneapolis, MN, and the 153rd Annual Meeting will be held in Washington, D.C. Sections are the primary professional units of the APHA, and they conduct activities that promote the mission and fulfill the goals of APHA. Specifically, the Environment Section’s goal for upcoming meetings is to foster interest in environmental health and justice, increase student involvement, and provide offerings on various environmental health and justice topics. The Section offers a wide variety of 30+ sessions, posters, plenary sessions, and special events to a diverse audience representing academics, health professionals, community members, and students. We aim to leverage a network of members, including over 1,600 academic, governmental, and community-based environmental health professionals to promote our conference scholarship to a wide range of U.S. schools. Our aims for the R13 grant are to: 1) Build and support the next generation of environmental health leaders with support for underrepresented students to attend, engage, enhance, and thrive at the meeting; 2) Foster mentorship between students and public health professionals in research, practice, and advocacy, particularly around environmental health science and justice topics; 3) Connect students to a forum for sharing lessons from research and practice to activate policy and programmatic changes needed to improve environmental health equity; and 4) Engage scholarship recipients beyond the annual meeting through Section leadership roles, networking opportunities, and intergenerational mentorship, as interested. All of this is done in alignment with NIEHS’s strategic plan and mission to conduct and support the very best environmental health sciences in the context of real-world public health needs. Ultimately, we aim to create a professional pathway within APHA for underrepresented students geared towards environmental health careers, while providing mid- and longtime members the opportunity to learn from the next generation of environmental health scientists.
