Blog Contest: Your Stories Wanted

It is a time of tremendous unrest in public health.  Your stories from the front lines of public health are critical to telling the story of the challenges facing public health today.

The Medical Care Blog is committed to elevating your voices on these and other public health topics. To encourage you to share your stories, we are sponsoring a blogging contest with the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association.

We are welcoming submissions from anyone with a public health story that would be relevant to readers of this blog or our sponsoring journal, Medical Care. We are open to submissions relevant to current or ongoing healthcare delivery and public health issues. We publish reactions to new developments in the health policy world, challenges related to recent changes in funding or policy, interviews with practitioners and researchers, and commentaries from health services researchers, clinicians, public health practitioners, policymakers, and analysts.

Propose a Post for the Blog Contest Here

Entries should be approximately 800-1500 words in length and submitted via our contact form by August 1st, 2025. Two outstanding submissions will be recognized with an “Outstanding Blog Post” award announcement and a $100 prize. Entries will be judged by a panel of reviewers who belong to the Medical Care Section. All entries will be considered for publication on the blog, but the final decision to publish is at the editors’ discretion. Regardless of the decision to publish, authors retain the copyright for their material and have permission to publish on secondary platforms as long as they also link back to the original post here.

In considering topics to propose, we encourage you to review posts on The Medical Care Blog as well as recent publications from the journal Medical Care. Posts that highlight or report on findings published in the Medical Care journal traditionally get special consideration. Please also consider reading over our 2025 consensus statement, declaring the blog’s theme for 2025 to be the Political Determinants of Health.

Interested in joining the competition? Check our FAQ page and then submit your post and a brief bio via our contact form. We hope to hear from you!

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Cole Ettingoff

Cole Ettingoff, MPH is a medical student, Vice President of the American Association of Public Health Physicians, a Governing Councilor of the American Public Health Association, vice chair of the public health committee for the National Association of EMS Physicians, and an appointed member of the public health committee for the American College of Emergency Physicians, among other roles. Cole previously worked extensively in local public health in multiple states and also has a background in emergency response in a wide range of roles with a passion for comprehensive pre-hospital and out of hospital care as an integrated piece of the larger healthcare system. In addition to his medical studies and his involvements nationally, Cole remains operationally active in his local fire department and the Red Cross.

Latest posts by Cole Ettingoff (see all)