Get $150,000 a Year to Build Practical Health System Research: Applied Implementation Science Fellowship 2026–2028

If you spend your days inside a hospital, clinic, or integrated delivery system and you get frustrated that proven interventions rarely make it into everyday practice, this fellowship was written for you. AcademyHealth’s Applied Implementation Science Fellowship funds clinician-researchers and health services investigators to do hands-on implementation work inside health systems — not in a lab, but where care is delivered. The prize: a $150,000-per-year stipend for two years, a matched implementation science mentor, conference visibility, communications support, and the rare commodity of protected time to get real projects done.

This is not a theoretical fellowship. It’s for people who want to test practical strategies — changing workflows, measuring adoption, improving patient outcomes — and generate findings that health systems can actually use. If your work mixes patient-facing practice with data-driven evaluation, and you can convince your employer to protect your time, this opportunity will give you both the funds and the network to scale your ideas.

Read on for a thorough guide: who should apply, what this pays for, exactly how to make your case, the documents you’ll need, a realistic timeline, and insider tips that separate polished applications from the rest.

At a Glance

Why this fellowship matters — a short, persuasive introduction

Implementation science is the craft of turning evidence into everyday practice. Think of it like plumbing: you can design a brilliant water heater (an effective intervention) but unless the piping is installed correctly, people won’t get hot water. This fellowship gives you both time and funding to fix the pipes inside a real health system.

A $150,000 annual stipend is large for an academic-style fellowship and signals the program’s focus on salary support and practical project costs — everything from participant incentives to IRB fees. Equally valuable are the mentoring and dissemination supports: you won’t just run a project and disappear. AcademyHealth helps you tell the story, present at their major meetings, and gain visibility in the community that matters for implementation science.

If your goal is to strengthen systems so patients actually benefit from proven care, this fellowship is an efficient way to build a track record that can lead to larger grants, system-wide adoption, or changes in clinical processes.

What This Opportunity Offers (200+ words)

Beyond the headline stipend, the fellowship supplies three kinds of value: salary and project funding, mentorship and training, and visibility and dissemination support. First, the $150,000-per-year stipend is intended to cover fellow salary and select programmatic and research project costs. That means you can free up protected time, pay for small evaluation expenses (participant incentives, survey platforms, IRB fees), and travel to conferences without asking your institution to pick up the tab.

Second, each fellow is paired with an implementation science (IS) mentor. A mentor who understands IS methods and health system constraints can accelerate your learning, help refine measures and study designs, and connect you to collaborators. The fellowship’s design emphasizes applied learning — you’ll practice implementation science inside your workplace rather than studying it in abstraction.

Third, AcademyHealth gives fellows visibility: membership, special panels at its Annual Research Meeting and the Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation, dissemination coaching, and opportunities to write for the AcademyHealth Blog. Those platforms are not just resume fodder; they’re places where health system leaders, funders, and researchers converge. Good work shown there travels fast.

Finally, the fellowship sets you up with practical skills: implementation frameworks, measurement of implementation outcomes (reach, adoption, fidelity, sustainment), pragmatic trial designs, and strategies for scaling interventions within complex organizations. All of that makes your next grant or system-level intervention far more credible.

Who Should Apply (200+ words)

This fellowship is built for people embedded in care delivery — clinicians, system-based researchers, or health services investigators — who have an advanced degree (M.D., D.O., PharmD, Nursing Ph.D., Ph.D./Sc.D./DrPH in HSR or related fields) and a permanent position in a healthcare organization. That “permanent position” requirement is crucial: postdocs and time-limited roles are not eligible. The program expects the employing organization to commit to protecting the applicant’s time so the fellow can meet program requirements and advance their implementation project.

Imagine you’re a hospitalist with a strong interest in reducing readmissions after hip fracture; or a pulmonologist leading an outpatient asthma care coordination team who wants to test implementation strategies for long-term controller therapy; or a clinical pharmacist who wants to move an evidence-based osteoporosis screening pathway into primary care. Those are the kinds of applicants who do well: people who already work where the change must happen and who can marshal local data, colleagues, and leadership support.

Applicants must have experience or a clear interest in one of the specified therapeutic areas: bone health (osteoporosis), severe uncontrolled asthma with or without COPD, thyroid eye disease, or IgG4-related conditions. If your primary work is in a different clinical area, you’ll need to demonstrate how your skills and interests map onto these topics or explain plans to pivot into one of them.

A concrete example: Dr. Lee is an early-career primary care investigator at a community health system. She has a faculty appointment, leads a small quality improvement team, and has previously piloted reminder systems for osteoporosis screening. With institutional support for 70% protected time, she could use the fellowship to rigorously test an implementation package across multiple clinics, measure adoption and fidelity, and prepare for a large NIH or PCORI submission.

Insider Tips for a Winning Application (300+ words)

1. Make institutional commitment explicit and concrete. Letters of support that say “we will allow protected time” are necessary but not sufficient. Ask your leader to specify the percent of protected time, backfill plans, and how you’ll be evaluated during the fellowship. A promise of 4 hours a week won’t cut it; reviewers want evidence that your organization will give you the bandwidth to execute.

2. Pair a scannable project aim with realistic outcomes. Outline a project with clearly measurable implementation outcomes — adoption rate, time to adoption, fidelity to the protocol, or sustainment at 6–12 months. Use familiar frameworks (e.g., RE-AIM, CFIR) to structure your approach, but explain them briefly in plain language so reviewers outside IS follow your logic.

3. Show early feasibility work. Even modest pilot data — workflow maps, stakeholder interviews, preliminary process measures — convinces reviewers that you aren’t starting from zero. If you haven’t pilot-tested anything, include a short feasibility phase in year one (e.g., 3 clinics, rapid Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles) rather than an overly ambitious full-scale rollout.

4. Build a strong mentorship plan. The fellowship pairs you with an IS mentor, but your application should identify potential mentors (internal or external), describe their relevant experience, and include a plan for regular meetings and deliverables. Say how the mentor will help with study design, analytic strategy, and career development.

5. Budget for what reviewers expect. The stipend is generous, but you must explain how you’ll allocate funds. Include salary support for protected time, small evaluation costs (surveys, software licenses), participant incentives if relevant, and travel to AcademyHealth meetings. Don’t forget IRB fees or data extraction costs.

6. Translate clinical relevance into health system priorities. Health-system leaders care about metrics: reduced length of stay, lower readmissions, improved disease-specific outcomes, or cost avoidance. Spell out how your project ties to these priorities and how the system will use your findings.

7. Plan for dissemination beyond academic papers. AcademyHealth values practical outputs: toolkits, implementation guides, slide decks for clinical operations, or dashboards. Include a short dissemination plan describing products you’ll create and how you’ll share them with both clinicians and administrators.

8. Use plain language and storytelling. Your chances improve if reviewers can picture the project in practice. Start with a one-paragraph vignette that humanizes the problem (a patient story, a clinician struggling with workflow) to ground your aims.

Application Timeline (150+ words)

Work backward from the February 13, 2026 deadline. Give yourself at least eight weeks of focused application time.

• 8–10 weeks before deadline (mid-December to early January): Draft your project narrative and specific aims. Identify internal letter writers and circulate a two-page project summary for feedback. Begin budget discussions with your institution.
• 6–7 weeks before deadline (late January): Secure letters of support from your department chair and operations leader specifying protected time. Confirm mentor availability and draft the mentorship plan. Obtain preliminary HR or finance confirmation that stipend payments or salary support are administratively feasible.
• 4–5 weeks before deadline (early February): Finalize budget justification and complete CVs/biosketches. Run the draft through at least two external reviewers — one in your clinical area and one with implementation science experience.
• 1–2 weeks before deadline: Incorporate feedback, proofread carefully, and submit at least 48 hours before the portal closes to avoid last-minute technical issues.
• After submission: Plan for follow-up. If selected, you’ll need to finalize institution-level paperwork and set an onboarding schedule with your mentor and AcademyHealth program staff.

Required Materials (150+ words)

While the program’s full list of required documents is on the official page, prepare these core materials in advance:

• A concise project narrative (usually 2–5 pages) that includes background, specific aims, methods, implementation strategies, outcome measures, timeline, and dissemination plan.
• A detailed budget and justification that explains how the stipend will support salary, programmatic expenses, and research costs.
• A mentorship plan listing the primary mentor and any additional advisors, with defined roles and meeting frequency.
• Letters of support from your employing organization confirming protected time and institutional commitment, and from any clinical or operational collaborators.
• Curriculum vitae or biosketch emphasizing relevant implementation, quality improvement, or health services work.
• Any preliminary data, flow diagrams, or charts that show feasibility or baseline measures.
• IRB or data access statements if available, or a plan for IRB submission.

Prepare these items early; letters of support often take the longest. Provide letter writers with a packet: one-page project summary, deadline, and suggested points to emphasize (percent protected time, access to data, staffing support).

What Makes an Application Stand Out (200+ words)

Reviewers look for three interlocking features: relevance to health systems, methodological rigor, and feasibility. A standout application ties a pressing clinical problem to an implementable solution and shows a clear way to measure success.

Relevance means the project addresses an issue that matters to patients and to system leaders. For instance, a proposal that seeks to embed osteoporosis fracture-prevention pathways into primary care must show how fracture prevention will reduce admissions, improve quality metrics, or align with institutional initiatives.

Methodological rigor in implementation science focuses less on laboratory precision and more on pragmatic measurement. Solid proposals specify primary and secondary implementation outcomes, data sources, sampling strategies, and analytic approaches. They explain how they will handle confounders and document fidelity to the intervention.

Feasibility is where many promising ideas fail. Provide evidence of data access, staff engagement, and leadership buy-in. A realistic timeline with milestones and contingency plans convinces reviewers that the work will be completed.

Finally, high-scoring applications think beyond the fellowship year: describe next steps (larger grants, system-wide scale) and show how AcademyHealth’s platforms will amplify the work.

Common Mistakes to Avoid (200+ words)

1. Weak institutional support. Vague letters that praise the applicant but don’t promise protected time or operational resources are a red flag. Get a letter that commits a percent of FTE and explains backfill plans.

2. Overambitious scope. Proposing a system-wide randomized rollout with no pilot is risky. Scale the project to what can be done in 24 months and describe phases for expansion.

3. Vague outcomes. Saying you’ll “improve care” without specifying measurable implementation outcomes leaves reviewers guessing. Define concrete metrics (percent of eligible patients receiving intervention, time to adoption, sustainment at X months).

4. Ignoring sustainment. Implementing change is one thing; keeping it is another. Include at least a basic plan for sustainment — how will the intervention be institutionalized if it works?

5. Poor budget justification. Don’t treat the stipend as a black box. Explain allocations for salary, software, incentives, travel, and IRB costs.

6. Too much jargon. While acronyms and IS frameworks are useful, avoid dense jargon. Explain frameworks in one sentence and show how they guide your methods.

Each mistake has an easy fix: get specific, scale realistically, secure concrete support, and prioritize clarity.

Frequently Asked Questions (200+ words)

Q: Can non-physicians apply?
A: Yes. The fellowship accepts applicants with advanced degrees in health-related fields or health services research, including Ph.D., DrPH, PharmD, Nursing Ph.D., and similar credentials. The key is the applicant’s role within a delivery system and a permanent employment status.

Q: Can a postdoc apply?
A: No. Applicants must hold a permanent position. Time-limited roles like postdoctoral fellowships are not eligible.

Q: Is visa sponsorship available?
A: No. Applicants must be legally authorized to work in the United States for the fellowship duration.

Q: Does the stipend go to the individual or the institution?
A: The program provides a stipend intended to support salary and select project costs. Administrative handling varies by institution; confirm with your finance office and the program staff how funds are disbursed.

Q: Do I have to work in one of the listed therapeutic areas?
A: Yes. The fellowship specifies focus areas: bone health (osteoporosis), severe uncontrolled asthma (± COPD), thyroid eye disease, and IgG4-related conditions. If your work is adjacent, clearly explain the connection and how your expertise will apply.

Q: Will AcademyHealth help with finding a mentor?
A: The fellowship pairs fellows with an IS mentor, but your application should identify potential mentors and describe their role. Proactively engaging a mentor strengthens your proposal.

Q: If I’m not selected, can I reapply?
A: Likely yes; check program guidelines for resubmission policies. Use reviewer feedback to improve a subsequent application.

Next Steps / How to Apply (100+ words)

Ready to apply? Start now. Draft a one-page problem statement and a two-page project summary to share with your chair and potential letter writers. Confirm protected time with your employer and begin assembling a mentorship plan. Save time for multiple rounds of feedback — both from an implementation scientist and from a clinical operations leader.

Visit the official application page for full instructions, eligibility details, and the online portal: https://academyhealth.org/page/fellow-application

If you have questions about administrative details or required documents, contact the program staff listed on the AcademyHealth page. They usually respond within a few business days and can clarify specifics about stipend administration and submission format.

Good luck — this fellowship is demanding, but for the right candidate it’s a powerful springboard to measurable improvements in patient care and a stronger implementation science career.