CALL FOR ABSTRACTS — APHA 2026 Annual Meeting and Expo
Early-Career Professional
Meeting theme: "Together We Thrive: Health Across the Lifespan"
Submission Deadline: Tuesday, March 31, 2026
The Early-Career Professionals Membership Group (ECP) represents recent public health graduates and former APHA student members to promote professional development, career building and networking for up to 3 years after graduation. It is the ECP’s goal to highlight the exceptional research of those new to their public health career and provide opportunities to showcase this work.
APHA has created poster sessions exclusively available to Early-Career Professional members at the 2026 APHA Annual Meeting & Expo in San Antonio from Nov. 1 – 4. Submissions for these sessions are limited to ECP members. Please submit abstracts addressing one of these topics:
Any innovative program, best practice, preparedness, lessons learnt, topic or courses that can be adopted in the workforce during the current challenge to public health Any projects, lessons, partnerships, assessments, courses or practices that are adopted into your work, environment or practice where you either modified an existing protocol or practice or adopted a new one or are researching to adopt it.
Broadly researched programs by ECPS at their worksite Topics that highlight the role of research or researched programs and topics and/or the need for ECPs that align with the Annual Meeting theme: “Together We Thrive: Health Across the Lifespan."
Role of AI and other latest technologies in public health – topics related to AI or latest technologies being used Any lessons, practices, health promotion, prevention programs and procedures that are using AI in the public health environment or healthcare delivery.
Abstracts should be 250 words or less and cannot refer to webpages or URLs. All abstracts will be reviewed based on relevance to the conference theme (“Together We Thrive: Health Across the Lifespan”) and/or the ECP topics above, noteworthiness of problem, and quality of design, methods and interpretation. All submissions are due by 11:59 p.m. PST on the due date listed on the Call for Abstracts webpage. No late submissions will be accepted. All abstracts must be submitted online through APHA’s easy-to-use online platform.
Authors will be contacted via email in early June regarding poster abstract selection. Submission of an abstract to the ECP Poster Sessions is an expression of the author's intention to attend the Annual Meeting and exhibit their work, should it be accepted for a poster session. Presenters must be APHA Early-Career Professional Members at the time of the meeting, and they will also be expected to register for the Annual Meeting by August. Currently, the ECP member group does not offer stipends to cover the cost of registration, poster printing or travel.
Check out the complete Early-Career Professionals Call for Abstracts page for a full description of abstract format, review guidelines and continuing education credits. If you have any questions regarding this process, please contact APHA’s ECP Staff Liaison at Nancy.Sherwood@apha.org.
