About Health Affairs Scholar
Health Affairs Scholar is a fully open access, peer-reviewed journal of emerging and global health policy. Published under the aegis of Health Affairs and Project HOPE, the journal builds on Health Affairs’ wide, multidisciplinary community of scholars and policy leaders to share new research and evidence with swift online publication.
In addition to covering core health policy topics of health care costs, access, quality and equity, Health Affairs Scholar highlights innovative cross-cutting research and commentary in health care technology, population health, and global health. Of interest are papers in emerging health policy research areas as well as research from intersecting fields of scholarship such as the environment, health and social services, housing, transportation, income, and justice. Topic areas covered by Health Affairs Scholar include but are not limited to those listed below.
As a fully open access journal, Health Affairs Scholar offers both CC BY 4.0 and CC BY-NC licenses. Peer reviewed articles are published as “advance articles” prior to copyediting or typesetting to facilitate rapid dissemination. The final copyedited, typeset version of the article will be published in an open issue with the same DOI. And Health Affairs Scholar is indexed in the Web of Science, as well as PubMed Central and Google Scholar, to increase discoverability of your research.
For more about article types, please see author guidelines.
Broad topic areas covered include:
Access to Care, Quality, Equity, Delivery and Clinical Innovation
Health Affairs Scholar covers these key pillar topics for health policy and health services research. Health equity is an important area for new research, policy analysis and commentary.
Costs and Health Economics
Health Affairs Scholar will offer an innovative venue for health policy and health services research focused on the interplay between these issues of cost and value with a focus on rigorous work with the potential to alter the policy discourse.
Global Health Policy
Health Affairs Scholar will have an expanded focus on global health policy relevant to any of the relevant topic areas. Papers that highlight cross-national comparisons or studies that provide policy lessons that may be extrapolated to other countries will be of particular interest for Health Affairs Scholar.
Intersections with Health
There has long been recognition of factors beyond the health care system that matter for people’s health. Health Affairs Scholar will therefore include cutting-edge topics such as income inequality, housing, immigration, climate, justice- and jail-involved populations, and ethics.
Policy and Commentary
Getting health care policy right matters, and Health Affairs Scholar will serve an important role connecting ideas from the research community and other experts to policymakers.
Population Health, Public Health and the Health Care Safety Net
Health Affairs Scholar will feature research on the health care safety net, not only from the US, but will highlight evidence from global efforts to improve coverage and the health of the population and public health.
Technology, Innovation, Data, and Pharmaceuticals
Papers exploring emerging technologies and their policy implications for payment, coverage, quality, future innovation and as well as analyses of interesting new data, including real world data, will be sought by Health Affairs Scholar.
