Welcome to The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Online Application System. This Web site allows you to submit an application for the Program, which will have Scholars entering during the Fall of 2012. All applicants must apply online at this site. Before beginning the application process, visit www.healthandsocietyscholars.org for details about the Program and descriptions of the six university training sites. You may contact the six universities directly to learn more about their Programs. Thank you for your interest in the Program.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation may conduct an independent evaluation of the Health and Society Scholars Program. Applicants may be contacted to participate in the assessment.

Outstanding individuals who have completed their doctoral training (including the award of their doctoral degree or letter of completion from their registrar's office) by the time of entry into the program (August or September 2012) in one of a variety of fields including, but not limited to, behavioral and social sciences, biological and natural sciences, health professions, public policy, public health, history, demography, environmental sciences, urban planning, engineering and ethics, are eligible, regardless of the number of years since receiving their doctorate. Applicants are expected to have significant research experience. Past training in health-related areas is not a requirement, but applicants must clearly connect their research interests to substantive population health concerns. Applicants should welcome the challenge of building the field of population health.

Additionally, applicants cannot be related by blood or marriage to any Officer* or Trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, or be a descendant of the Foundation's founder, Robert Wood Johnson. *The Officers are the Chairman of the Board of Trustees; President and CEO; Chief of Staff; General Counsel; Secretary; and Assistant Secretary of the Foundation.

Those individuals placed in the program must be willing to relocate to the institution designated during the match process for the duration of the two-year program.

RWJF is committed to a program that embraces racial, ethnic, gender and disciplinary diversity, and we encourage applications from candidates with diverse backgrounds. Applicants must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States or its territories at the time of application to the program.

The national program office (NPO) does not pre-screen the backgrounds, writing samples or essays of potential applicants.

You will be able to work on your application, save it, and return to it at a later time. We recommend that you review the entire application and have all of the following information on hand before you start the online application process. Click here to see the entire online application.

• Personal References. Contact information for three (3) personal references who will be requested (via email) to respond to five (5) questions pertaining to the applicant on a secure webpage, where they will also be able to insert a letter of reference into an open text field. As ours is an online application and review system, we are unable to accept letters of reference in any other format, or beyond the September 30, 2011 deadline. In order to allow your references as much lead time as possible, you will be asked to complete and submit this section before starting the rest of the application. IMPORTANT: You should confirm with all three (3) of your references that they are able to meet the deadline (prior to submitting them as a reference) and explain the process so they are not under the impression that we are just looking for a letter of reference to be submitted. In order to complete the Personal References section, you will need to provide contact information for all three references simultaneously. After you submit this information, we will notify your references by email and provide them with instructions for online submission of recommendations. Again, all recommendations must be submitted by the application deadline of September 30, 2011 at 5:00pm EDT. If we do not receive all three recommendations, your application will not be reviewed. Please note that you will be able to change a reference later as long as the original reference has not already submitted a recommendation to us.
• Personal information. This includes your educational and training experiences, work history and relevant skills, committee activities, honors/awards, and publication citations. We suggest you have an electronic file of your CV on-hand to cut and paste this information.
• Personal statements. You will be asked to respond to these two questions (each response is limited to 5000 characters including spaces and punctuation):
  a) Describe your dissertation or other recent or current research (including what led you to it and why it is important). and
  b) What questions are you interested in addressing while in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program? How will the program build on your work to date, fill gaps in your current knowledge and skills, and change your career trajectory?
  We suggest that you write your responses in a word processor, do a character count, and then cut and paste the text into the online application.
• Electronic writing sample. Submit a writing sample you consider to be representative of your best writing, research, and analytical abilities. The writing sample may be a chapter from a doctoral dissertation, a journal article, a paper currently under journal review, a policy brief, or a research proposal. The review committee strongly prefers a sample in which you are the single author. If that is not an option for you, co-authored documents may be submitted with the condition that you must specifically describe the roles and responsibilities you played in the production of the document. The National Program Office does not provide advice on your selection of documents. The document (including references, charts, etc.) must not exceed the equivalent of 25 double-spaced pages. The sample must be submitted electronically as one file. Acceptable document formats are Microsoft Word (.doc), Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), or Rich Text Format (.rtf). Instructions for uploading your document are provided in the "Writing Sample" section of the online application system.
• Location Preferences. You will have the opportunity to note your preference as to which program sites in which you: 1) Are Interested; or 2) Not Interested.
• Curriculum Vitae You have the option of additionally submitting a copy of your curriculum vitae to supplement the information in your application, however, please realize that you still need to fill in the sections of the application, even if that same information is on your c.v., to guarantee that it will be considered by the reviewers. The curriculum vitae must be submitted electronically as one file. Acceptable document formats are Microsoft Word (.doc), Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), or Rich Text Format (.rtf). Instructions for uploading your document are provided in the "Curriculum Vitae" section of the online application system.
• Please Note - No Transcripts Required

• Friday, September 30, 2011 (5:00 PM EDT): All completed applications and letters of recommendation must be submitted online by this time.
• November and December 2011: Application screening and review.
• Mid-December 2011: Approximately 50 Finalists are selected for interviews.
• January 2012: Finalists are invited to interview at one or more participating universities. The Program will reimburse finalists for reasonable travel and lodging expenses incurred during the interview process.
• Mid to Late February 2012: Finalists are notified regarding the Program's final decision.
• August or September 2012: Up to 12 Scholars start their fellowships.

If you have additional questions regarding the Program, please contact:

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars
The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10029-5202
Phone: (212) 419-3566
Fax: (212) 416-3569
E-mail: hss@nyam.org

If you have technical questions or problems with the online application process, please fill out an online support request with the Health & Society Scholars Online Application Support team at: https://www.hsscholars.org/supportRequest.php.