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 2009. 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 2009) 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.

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 personal references who will provide letters of recommendation. 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. 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 letters of recommendation. All letters of recommendation must be submitted by the application deadline of October 3. If we do not receive all three letters, your application will not be reviewed. Before you submit contact information, you should contact your references, confirm that they are able to provide a letter and inform them that they will receive an email notification on how to submit their recommendations. Please note that you will be able to change a reference later as long as the original reference has not already submitted a letter of 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 Definitely Interested; 2) Would Consider; or 3) Would Not Consider or Are Ineligible. Your response will not influence your chances for overall acceptance into the program
• 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, October 3, 2008 (5:00 PM EDT): All completed applications and letters of recommendation must be submitted online by this time.
• November and December 2008: Application screening and review.
• Mid-December 2008: Approximately 50 Finalists are selected for interviews.
• January 2009: 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 2009: Finalists are notified regarding the Program’s final decision.
• August or September 2009: Up to 18 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.