Complete instructions for submitting to the Aequitas Health Journal. Format requirements, review process, and tips for a successful submission.
The Aequitas Health Journal is an online medical humanities and scientific journal publishing scholarly non-fiction on topics including social issues, biography, self-reflections, ethics, education, scholarly fiction, poetry, and health services research targeted at health equity and disparities.
Editor-in-Chief: Benson Hsu, MD, MBA, FAAP, FCCM
Review timeline: Less than 4 weeks from submission to decision
Eligibility: All contributors must be active Fellows in good standing. Submissions must not be published elsewhere or under consideration by other publications.
Word count: 500–2,500 words, excluding references. Poetry is exempt from the minimum word count.
Format: 12-point Times New Roman, double-spaced, 1-inch margins, numbered pages.
References: AMA citation format, maximum 10 references.
Required materials:
1. Cover letter — including copyright transfer statement and disclosure of any conflicts of interest.
2. Title page — including title, tagline (subtitle), word count, author name(s), institutional affiliation(s), and corresponding author email.
3. Manuscript — the article itself, formatted per the specifications above.
Submissions should be high quality and free from grammatical and punctuation errors. Accepted submissions may be lightly edited for style, grammar, and punctuation.
The Journal publishes two primary categories:
Reflections: Personal essays, ethical analyses, narrative medicine pieces, and commentary on health equity topics. These are first-person, experience-driven works that explore what it means to practice medicine in communities where access to care is uneven.
Projects: Reports on community health projects completed as part of the fellowship. These should describe the community need, the intervention, the outcomes, and the lessons learned. They are scholarly reports, not summaries — they should include methods, results, and references where applicable.
Email your complete submission (cover letter, title page, and manuscript) to:
You will receive confirmation of receipt within 48 hours. The editorial board reviews all submissions, and you will receive a decision within 4 weeks. Decisions include: accept, accept with revisions, revise and resubmit, or decline.
Start specific. The strongest journal articles open with a moment, a patient, or a question — not with background literature. The reader should be drawn in before they encounter your thesis.
Show, don't tell. "Health disparities are a significant problem" is a thesis statement. "Mrs. Johnson drives 90 minutes each way for dialysis because the nearest center in her county closed in 2019" is a story. Stories land harder.
Include outcomes. For project reports, quantify your results wherever possible. How many patients served? What changed? If outcomes aren't available yet, describe what you're measuring and when you expect results.
Cite your sources. Even reflective essays benefit from grounding claims in evidence. If you reference a health disparity, cite the data. AMA format, maximum 10 references.
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