Health Affairs

Description

Health Affairs is the leading journal of health policy thought and research. The peer-reviewed journal was founded in 1981 under the aegis of Project HOPE, a nonprofit international health education organization. Health Affairs explores health policy issues of current concern in both domestic and international spheres.

“For more than 20 years, Health Affairs has been a must-read for anyone with a serious interest in medicine, health care, and health care policy.” — Washington Post

Frequency

Number of issues per year is six with additional supplements. Online peer-reviewed papers of a timely nature are published weekly on average as Web Exclusives.

Articles and Pages

Health Affairs published 254 articles in 2007. Pages published totaled 2,468 including Supplements. Three Supplements were published in 2007.

How to Access Our Content

Every article Health Affairs has ever published is available online at www.healthaffairs.org. All readers have free access to selected Health Affairs journal articles at time of posting (Web Exclusive for two weeks, Editor’s Choice articles for two months); all journal articles three years old or older; and all Health Affairs Blog content. The full twenty-six-year article archive is online. have access to all journal content. We also provide search capability within Health Affairs’ full archive. E-mail alerts and RSS feeds are available.

Health Affairs’ Web site is maintained in conjunction with Stanford University’s HighWire Press.

Health Affairs is an original signatory to the Washington, D.C. Principles for Free Access to Science.

Subscriptions

Health Affairs is available by subscription to individuals and site-wide to libraries and institutions. National and Global site licenses are also available to institutions. See Subscription for more information.

Editor-in-Chief Susan Dentzer
Executive Editor Donald E. Metz
Executive Publisher Jane Hiebert-White
Founding Editor John K. Iglehart

Authors

Health Affairs authors include top scholars, policymakers, and health care industry leaders. We also welcome submissions from those who do not typically write for peer-reviewed journals.

Submissions

Health Affairs receives approximately 1,000 manuscripts annually.

• Each paper is reviewed by the editors for timeliness and relevance to the journal’s objectives. About 40% of these submissions are selected for external review.
• For papers that are not selected for external review, the journal notifies authors within two to three weeks of submission.
• For papers that are selected for external review, authors can expect to wait about two to three months from the date of submission until notification of the journal’s decision.
• For papers that are selected for revision, the length of time between the revision request and publication will vary widely (from four weeks to several months) depending on the extent of revision required, the need for additional review and revision, whether the bound volume or on our Web site, etc.

Our acceptance rate for unsolicited papers is currently 10–15 percent. See more information on how to submit a paper.

Circulation

10,000 domestic and international subscribers. Readership: Three readers per issue copy (Beta Research Corp. independent survey) or 30,000 readers per printed copy. For subscription prices and ordering procedure, see Subscribe.

Web Site Traffic

Pageviews per month average 1.3 million as of December 2007. Annual page views total 16.7 million. Number of user sessions average 4.4 million per year. Most-read papers reach 90,000-140,000 pageviews each.

Policy Impact

Health Affairs’ articles were cited 27 times in congressional testimony in 2007. A paper published in Health Affairs served as the basis for the Elimination on Neglected Diseases (END) amendment to the FDA Revitalization Act, which was signed into law on September 27, 2007. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) sponsored the amendment after learning about the article in Health Affairs.

If you want to follow along or participate in the health care debate, ”it’s time to renew your subscription to the indispensable journal, Health Affairs.” — Washington Post

Eigenfactor

Health Affairs is rated number one in cost-effectiveness among scholarly periodicals in the field of health policy and services.

• Impact Factor for 2007: 3.004
• Health Care Sciences and Services: 5/57
• Health Policy & Services: 5/40

Press Citations

Health Affairs is frequently cited by national media, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, network television and radio, and NPR. The January 12, 2005, Washington Post cited Health Affairs as “the bible of health policy.”

Policy Reach

Health Affairs is health policymakers’ most frequently read journal and is consulted by 55% of staff members on U.S. congressional committees of jurisdiction in health—ahead of JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine, which are read by 17% and 10% of staff members, respectively (independent survey by the Center for Studying Health System Change).

Readership

Health Affairs readers include government health leaders (local, national, and international); decisionmakers at hospitals, insurance companies, and other health care industries; researchers and academics in economics, law, public health, sociology, health administration, medicine, nursing, and political science; advocates; consultants; investment analysts; reporters; and students.

Topics Covered

Health Affairs is a multidisciplinary journal covering a wide range of health issues. Topics covered include: access to care, health spending, quality, Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drug coverage and costs, physician practice, nursing trends, mental health, malpractice and health law, insurance reform, hospitals, global health, and disparities in health care, and more. To view a complete list of topics, see Topic Collections.

Inside the Journal

Health Affairs is divided into the following major sections:

• Feature articles: New proposals, original research, and analysis of timely health policy issues
• Report From The Field: High-level journalistic article that explores a timely health policy topic, published with support of the Kaiser Family Foundation and Kaiser Health Reporting
• Commentary: Opinions and proposals for change
• Interviews: Conversations with leaders in government and the private sector
• Narrative Matters: Personal stories about the health care system that highlight policy issues of concern, published with support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
• Health Tracking: New research on trends and health care markets
• DataWatch: Data-driven analysis and original research
• GrantWatch: A review of recently awarded foundation grants and grant outcomes, with regular essays or special reports about health philanthropy
• Book Reviews
• Letters to the Editor: Lively discussion of issues raised in Health Affairs papers

Thematic Issues

Health Affairs publishes both thematic and “variety” issues every year. Thematic issues (up to five per year) are devoted to in-depth exploration of a key topic surrounding health and health care.

Web Exclusives

Online papers are published weekly, on average, as Web Exclusives at www.healthaffairs.org. An abstract for each Web-Exclusive paper is published in the first bound volume that follows the paper’s publication on the Web. Web-Exclusive papers are subject to the same peer review, evaluation, and editing as any other paper published by Health Affairs. They are indexed in the literature at time of posting.

Health Affairs Blog

The Health Affairs blog provides opportunities for a more inclusive and interactive health policy dialogue via timely commentary and analysis. Original invited and staff-written posts are vetted and posted by the editors of Health Affairs. These posts are not externally peer-reviewed, but they do link to the original peer-reviewed journal articles where appropriate. We welcome relevant comments from readers using their real names. Health Affairs Blog content is copyrighted and licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Indexes/Abstracts

Health Affairs is indexed and/or abstracted in PUBMED, MEDLINE, EBSCOhost, EBSCO EJS, ProQuest, Lexis-Nexis; ISI’s Current Contents/Health Sciences and Behavioral Sciences; and SwetsWise Online Content.

ISSN 0278-2715
Electronic ISSN 1544-5208

Federal Tax I.D. Number 53-0242962

Publisher

Health Affairs is published and copyrighted by Project HOPE — The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.
7500 Old Georgetown Road, Suite 600
Bethesda, MD 20814
301-656-7401