Membership • Member Benefits
See how your AHCJ membership can boost your career.
We are committed to raising the profile and quality of health care journalism. To us, that means offering an ever-expanding list of resources and opportunities to learn, grow and advance.
Training
- Annual conferences offer prominent speakers, provide concrete story ideas and offer opportunities for networking.
- Regional workshops and summits focus on issues like rural health, mental and behavioral health and covering gun violence as a public health issue.
- A portfolio of fellowship programs provide specialized training, support and mentoring for individuals and cohorts. These include year-long fellowships and shorter fellowships, like three days at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Resources
- Automatic subscription to the AHCJ weekly newsletter, Health Beat, with member-only opportunities and content. Check out past issues.
- Exclusive access to tip sheets, entries to the annual AHCJ Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism contest, job postings, newsletter archives and a special section geared toward freelancers.
- A 20% discount on one single-user subscription to AP Stylebook Online each year.
- Discounted access to LexisNexis, containing some 250 industry publications, including the American Journal of Public Health, The Lancet, Biotech Business, Modern Healthcare and Occupational Health.
- Free access to journals and databases, including:
- Wiley Online Library: Read millions of articles from more than 1,500 journals, including the Cochrane Library, Cancer, Journal of the American Heart Association and more.
- Doximity: Explore the first comprehensive national research on residency programs, including detailed information on 3,600 residency programs such as board pass rate, subspecialization rate, alumni distribution and feeder medical schools.
- Elsevier’s ClinicalKey and ScienceDirect: Dig into the world’s first Clinical Insight Engine that lets you take advantage of the world’s largest online database of science, technical and medical information with ScienceDirect.
- UpToDate.com: Learn about the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and treatment of most medical conditions. Content is created, reviewed and updated by more than 5,100 physician authors and editors.
- Annual Reviews: Explore this nonprofit publisher dedicated to synthesizing and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society.
- Health Affairs: This leading journal of health policy research offers a nonpartisan forum to promote analysis and discussions on improving health.
- American Journal of Public Health: This journal is dedicated to original work in research, research methods, and program evaluation in the field of public health.
- The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) Network: Gain access to 12 leading peer-reviewed medical research journals.
- The Medical Letter: Read critical appraisals of new prescription drugs and comparative reviews of drugs for common diseases.
- Already a member? Sign up for journals, systematic reviews and databases here. (Some journals require an individual review before access is granted.)
Networking
- Our Health Journalism Slack Community is a peer learning community of journalists committed to better health care reporting because we believe accurate, contextual and balanced health care reporting is more important than ever. Check out our community guidelines here, and apply to join the community!
- Follow us for the latest updates on LinkedIn, Facebook Threads, BlueSky and Twitter.
- Bookmark our calendar of events for information on upcoming training, fellowship application deadlines and more.
- Meet expert sources and exhibitors at our conferences to expand your source list – and your story’s impact.
Career Development
- Be part of the online directory of AHCJ members who freelance for hiring managers to find expert health journalists.
- Attend medical organization meetings with your AHCJ membership, which is a recognized media credential.
- Learn the latest job openings, fellowships, contests and freelance opportunities.
- Apply for a Fellowship program that offers specialized topic training and networking.
- Submit your stories to the annual Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism – recognizing the best health reporting in print, broadcast and online media – is meant to help raise the caliber of work being done. It is sponsored exclusively by the association.
AHCJ Mentorship Program
- Are you looking for career advice? Managing up in your newsroom? How to lead with influence in a newsroom where you don’t have any direct reports? Or are you wanting to impart your knowledge, expertise and seasoned advice to early-career journalists?
- Sign up for the AHCJ mentorship program.
Advocacy
- We advocate for transparency, openness and responsiveness by government and private-sector officials.
- We help members raise concerns to government officials who ignore them.
- We partner with other journalism groups to write letters and op-eds about important journalism issues of the day.
- We abide by strong standards and journalism ethics.
Questions?
Questions about your membership, membership benefits or thinking about joining AHCJ? Sign up for virtual office hours with Tina England, Membership Manager, or email her at tina@healthjournalism.org.
