The American Public Health Association (APHA) is the oldest and largest professional society for public health in the United States, founded in New York City in 1872 and now headquartered in Washington, DC. Unlike commercial publishers with thousands of journals, APHA's publishing program is deliberately focused: one flagship peer-reviewed journal - the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH), published monthly since 1911 - plus The Nation's Health, a newspaper for the public health workforce, and APHA Press, which publishes practice-oriented books including the widely used Control of Communicable Diseases Manual.

For researchers, the practical target is AJPH. It is one of the most-cited journals in public health, indexed in MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science, and voted one of the 100 most influential journals in biology and medicine of the past century by the Special Libraries Association. This guide covers what AJPH publishes, the open-access option and its $2,500 fee, the double-blind peer review process, and how to submit through Editorial Manager.

AJPH covers the full breadth of public health: epidemiology, health policy and law, health equity, environmental and occupational health, behavioral science, and public health practice. Article types include original research, brief reports, analytic essays, editorials, and commentaries. The editors explicitly deprioritize outdated data (data collection completed more than 3 years before submission), pilot and feasibility studies, small convenience samples, and studies without a comparison group - check the current author instructions before submitting.

AJPH is a hybrid subscription journal. Standard publication carries no author-facing fee; open access is optional and paid.

APHA does not publicize an LMIC waiver program or large read-and-publish agreements; if the OA fee is a barrier, contact the editorial office and check current terms before submission.

AJPH uses double-blind peer review: reviewers do not see author identities, and authors do not learn reviewer identities. Initial submissions must therefore be fully blinded - no author names, affiliations, funding sources, IRB institutions, or trial registration numbers in the manuscript file or filename. A first triage by the Editor-in-Chief and Senior Deputy Editor rejects the majority of manuscripts within about 2 weeks. Papers sent to review typically receive scrutiny from 3 reviewers plus an associate editor, deputy editor, and the Editor-in-Chief; first decisions take about 3 months, and overall time from submission to acceptance averages about 6 months.

1. Prepare a blinded manuscript. 1.5 or double spacing, 12-point font, continuous line numbers, page numbers, and tables/figures embedded at the end or uploaded separately.
2. Prepare the title page separately. Title, author names, affiliations, and the full abstract go in their own file.
3. Write a short cover letter. Maximum 150 words - state whether the paper was commissioned or responds to a call for papers; trial registration details go here only.
4. Format references in AMA numbered style. SciSpace templates and formatting tools can handle this automatically.
5. Submit via Editorial Manager. AJPH's online submission and peer-review system; decisions arrive by email, and questions go to ajph.submissions@apha.org.

APHA follows established publication-ethics norms for AJPH: COPE-aligned editorial policies, mandatory conflict-of-interest disclosure, clinical-trial registration in ClinicalTrials.gov or another approved registry, and IRB approval for human-subjects research. The journal publishes its editorial and ethical policies openly and enforces blinding throughout review to reduce bias - it has even run a registered triple-masked review trial to test whether hiding identities from editors as well as reviewers further reduces bias.