***PLEASE READ THIS CALL FOR SESSIONS IN ITS ENTIRETY BEFORE SUBMISSION***

https://apha.confex.com/apha/2026/cfp.cgi

Overview

The American Public Health Association is now accepting full session abstracts for Public Health Funder Network (PHFN) sessions to be held during the APHA 2026 Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas (Sunday, November 1st through Wednesday, November 4, 2025). Abstracts will be accepted through the APHA online system from Monday, January 5 through Friday, March 31, 2025 11:59 PM PDT. Submitters will be notified via email of abstract status on June 2nd.

NOTE:  All presenters and moderators must register (and pay) for the APHA Annual Meeting. One day registrations are available.

The Public Health Funder Network is a community of grantmakers, donors, and APHA members who recognize that philanthropy has an important role in the improvement of population health outcomes and overall community health. The goal of the PHFN is to promote a cross-sector approach to solving complex public health challenges by convening, networking, and sharing best practices, with a special focus on philanthropy as a catalyst to drive change through innovative strategies and solutions in partnership with local communities.

Foundations and donors that fund in public health* are encouraged to submit full session abstracts for peer review. The 2026 meeting theme is "Together We Thrive: Health Across the Lifespan" and submitters are encouraged to incorporate the theme in the sessions that they submit. Additionally, funders from the conference host city and/or state are encouraged to submit at least one session abstract, during which they can highlight their work before a national audience. Submitters will be notified of session selection on June 2, 2026.

* Note: Public health refers to all organized measures (public or private) to prevent disease, promote health, and prolong life among the population as a whole. Its activities aim to provide conditions in which people can be healthy and focus on entire populations, not on individual patients or diseases.

Specific topics of interest to the Public Health Funder Network include but are not limited to:

• Demystifying philanthropy. Explore different types of philanthropic institutions (e.g., private foundations, community foundations, corporate giving programs, government funders, etc.) and the approaches used to advance health; encourage connections between public health practitioners and/or nonprofits and funders, as well as amongst funders themselves.
  
  
• Building multi-sector collaboration. Advance strategies to encourage collaboration among professions, across public health issues, among diverse funding partners, and with evaluators. Sessions should uplift approaches funders are using to address social and ethical challenges in building multi-sector collaboration. This can include examples that warrant particular attention for what worked and what did not.
  
  
• Assuming unique, nontraditional roles. Advance innovative strategies that address social and structural determinants of health; bring potential funder and grantee partners together and leverage institutional strengths to deliver programs and impact; commission research and evaluation, mobilize, catalyze, and advocate.
  
  
• Sharing best practices or new ideas. Funding strategies, monitoring, and evaluation of grants, tracking changes in communities served, and other areas of philanthropy in service to public health. As funders have moved to improve their internal and inter-organization processes to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, have there been particular social and ethical challenges that have come to the fore or from which lessons can be learned? Have new, unique, or nontraditional roles arisen or become less unique and more universal?
  
  
• Sessions that connect the Annual Meeting theme: Together We Thrive: Health Across the Lifespan. 

See examples of session abstracts selected for presentation at APHA 2025:

1. Stronger Smiles for a Better Tomorrow: Working Alongside Communities to Embolden the Oral Health Workforce
2. Prioritizing Lived Experience as a Core Tenet of Health Equity
3. Collaborating for Change: Advancing Evidence-Based Perinatal Substance Use Disorder Care Across Communities and Systems
4. Hospitals and Beyond: A Case for Health Funder Investment through the Community Safety Ecosystem
5. Beyond Band-Aids: Innovative Community Partnerships in Food is Medicine & Over-the-Counter Benefits
6. Addressing the Nursing Shortage in Safety Net Hospitals in New York State by Building Healthy Work Environments for Nurses 
7. Powering change: How a multi-sector, intermediary funder model can respond to critical public health priorities

In 2025, the PHFN hosted its first Pre-Conference Workshop titled: Grantmaking foundations and public health: who are they, what do they do, and how do nonprofits access funding? 

Finally, each year, the PHNF holds a Business Meeting and a Network Social Hour. Funders that wish to financially support either event in 2026 should contact PHFN Leaders (emails at the end of this document).

PHFN Session Submission Procedures

Please be aware that this is a Call for Full Session Abstracts rather than a call for individual speaker abstracts. Session abstracts typically include multiple projects or multiple presenters from the same project. The strongest sessions include multiple funders or projects from multiple cities (versus highlighting the work of a single funder or foundation). Details on all presenters for the session, their professional affiliations, and their role within the session must be provided in the full session abstract. Sessions must also identify a moderator.

PRO TIP:  The session description should provide details about what each presenter will be talking about.The same descriptions will be used by each presenter for their abstract when they submit.

PHFN sessions are 90 minutes in length, theme-related, and should be created to appeal to a large cross-section of APHA meeting participants. PHFN also encourages sessions that are co-sponsored by other APHA Sections and/or that demonstrate ways in which public health funders engage across public health issues.

Please include ALL submission information in advance of the March 31, 2026 deadline.

To access the APHA submission portal click here. Below are instructions for submitting a full session abstract::

• Select APHA Program “Public Health Funder Network”
• Select session topic
• Select submission type “Session”
• Select session title
• Select description
• Select up to 3 learning outcomes
• Select session type
• Select abstract type “contributed”
• Select estimated attendance
• Complete Conflict of Interest Form
• Submit session

Session submitters are also responsible for the following:

• Checking email confirmation for instructions to potential speakers and provide them with the session ID provided in the confirmation as well as the topic they should submit their abstract to.
• Managing and handle all communications with speakers.
• Obtaining any additional information/materials/logistics required by APHA from speakers by set deadlines.
• Cooperating with APHA staff to ensure compliance with CE requirements.

APHA requires that the session organizer, presenters, and moderators join or renew APHA membership and register for the Annual Meeting.

Session Format

Please indicate in your abstract the type of format for your session. Options include:

• Oral
• Panel discussion
• Roundtables

We encourage creativity in designing and formatting your session. For example, a group discussion might be facilitated within the panel discussion format, where panelists frame an issue or offer opening views and a moderator poses questions to stimulate an open, thought-provoking discussion. Or a panel discussion might take an interview or talk show design, where a moderator poses a series of questions to panelists. Use of videos might also be considered, for example, to have a grantee's perspective represented at a roundtable.

Selection and Review Criteria

The PHFN Program Committee oversees the planning, implementation, and evaluation of all session abstracts submitted within this track. The Program Committee will select the proposed session using the criteria listed below:

1. Importance of issue or problem addressed and/or alignment with Annual Meeting theme.
2. Innovative and/or emerging approach or perspective that highlights funders work broadly versus the work of a single foundation/funder.
3. Compelling potential to attract a broad audience, cross-sector of conference participants.
4. Thorough discussion on how and why the session creates a learning opportunity (not just the description or the “what” of the learning).
5. Explanation of how the learnings are widely applicable to different types and size of funders.

Program Committee members recuse themselves from reviewing abstracts where they may have a professional or personal affiliation to avoid any conflict of interest.

Continuing Education Credit

As an organization, APHA is committed to providing quality continuing education (CE) activities to its membership and meeting registrants. For a session to be eligible for CE, a session abstract must include 3-5 speaker abstracts where each includes:

• A speaker presentation title distinct from the session title.
• An abstract of at least 2 sentences explains/describes the presentation to be given.
• At least one measurable learning objective written in action terms.
• Content of sound science and evidenced-based.
• Include a signed Conflict of Interest (Disclosure) form with a relevant Qualification Statement.

Questions?

For other questions, please contact PHFN leaders listed below.

Ready? 

Program Planner Contact Information:

Rachel Baird, Program Officer, VNA Foundation: rachel@vnafoundation.net 

Tori Umstattd Cope, Senior Strategist, Missouri Foundation for Health: tcope@mffh.org

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Ready?

Program Planner Contact Information:

Victoria Umstattd Cope,
toricope1991@gmail.com


and

Rachel Baird,
rachel@vnafoundation.net