Delta Omega Scholarships and Awards

ELIGIBILITY

Only currently registered students or postdoctoral fellows from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health can apply. 

Funds up to $2,500 are available to defray all or part of the cost of a research project or scholarly activity. 

HOW TO APPLY

The deadline is generally in early April and will be announced a few weeks prior.

Applicants must submit an application form and a proposal. 

All proposals must include a clear description of the project in the form of a brief abstract summary and an itemized budget plan outlining how the monetary support will be used. Abstracts must follow the following format:

1. Introductions/Importance, Goals
2. Methods
3. Significance
4. Allocation of expenses by category up to $2,500. Please indicate any additional available funding that will be used to carry out research.

Abstracts must be submitted to one of the following categories:

• Applied Research: uses or develops quantitative or qualitative approaches to address public health problems
• Policy and Practice: puts public health principles and knowledge into practice
• Laboratory Research: basic science research

Please note: Proposals may not exceed two pages (single space) and budgets must be limited to one page. All pages must have at least one-half inch margins—top, bottom, left, and right. 

SCORING

All applications are reviewed competitively by a panel of society members who will assign priority scores based on a judgment of each project's feasibility, scientific or scholarly merit, and significance for public health.

Abstracts will be judged on:

• Significance: Does this study address an important problem? If the aims of the application are achieved, how will scientific knowledge be advanced? What will be the effect of this study's findings on the concepts or methods that drive this field?
• Approach: Are the design, methods, and analyses adequately developed, well-integrated, and appropriate to the aims of the project?
• Innovation: Does the project employ novel concepts, approaches, or methods? Does the project challenge existing paradigms or develop new methodologies or techniques?

Abstracts will be scored by a 4-level rating system, rating each of the above criteria separately: 1-Outstanding, 2-Excellent, 3-Good, 4-Fair.

Competition rules

Participants should submit their application online. 

After submitting the application, participants will receive an email confirmation that the application was received.

The Society and the School cannot be responsible for protection of the posters and poster materials during the competition or afterward, although a security guard will be nearby. Any valuable materials or equipment should be monitored by the participant, who must accept responsibility for them.

Eligibility Requirements

The scientific poster competition is open to students and fellows enrolled in the School who recently have engaged in a noteworthy scholarly investigation or scientific study during the period of enrollment. Approval from the student's faculty adviser is recommended but not required.

Priority should be given to recent work within the department, including work still in progress, for which the student or fellow has had primary responsibility (i.e., qualifies as first author). Thesis research for a master's or doctoral degree at the school is eligible for presentation, either as a report on work in progress or as a final report. For completed work (e.g., a thesis already defended), the date of completion of the investigation or study should be no greater than 18 months prior to the poster competition. However, all of the School's enrollees are eligible for selection by the department for this competition, including special, limited, and part-time students, and postdoctoral and visiting fellows.

Alumni participants may be selected by the departments, provided the work was initiated or completed while they were enrolled as students or fellows during the 18 months prior to the competition.

The student submitting must be the first author.

The student should prepare a short statement indicating the scope of the scientific work he or she did in preparation of this poster.

Please note that applicants may only submit one poster to the competition. 

Abstract Guidelines

Abstracts should be no more than 314 words and should consist of text only (no graphics). A structured abstract, with section headers, is acceptable but not required. All authors and their affiliations should be listed. Please provide the abstract as a Word document or PDF, single-spaced, Arial 11pt font.

Instructions for Preparing the Poster Display

The poster display for the Delta Omega Scientific Poster session may be drawn up in any standard format that is acceptable for presentation at an annual meeting of another scientific or professional society such as the American Public Health Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or the Society for Epidemiologic Research. We would be pleased to know that the poster has been used or will be used in another venue, and we encourage the participant to prepare the poster so that it can be used elsewhere, rather than simply for this competition.

Each participant's entire poster display, including all panels and materials, must fit a rectangular display board that is constructed to be 60 inches tall and 35 inches wide. The poster material can be mounted on these display boards using thumbtacks, which the participant should bring along with the poster materials. The participant is responsible for making sure that the poster display fits on the display board, and is completely responsible for attaching the individual elements to the display board according to our instructions.

The poster display should include:

• Title panel, with title of the study
• Author(s)
• Departmental affiliation

This title panel may be in banner format across the top of the display or in an 8 ½ x 11 format in the upper right-hand corner. Collaborators other than the first author whose work is represented should be indicated by a footnote in the title panel.

The Welch Library reference collection has books with general instructions and helpful hints for participants who are unfamiliar with preparation of poster displays at scientific meetings.

Listen to a recording of the 2019 postercraft seminar here and learn about the art and science of crafting a poster. 

Judging for the Competition

A panel of judges will review the poster presentations. The judges will be selected by Chapter officers from among current members of the University faculty, distinguished visiting faculty currently in residence at the School, and distinguished alumni who have been elected for membership in the Delta Omega Society.

Each judge will rate each entry on a 100-point scale. The final ranking of entries will be based upon the mean of the resulting distribution of scores.

Recognition of Participants and Winners

Provided that there are sufficient entrants in each category, poster displays will be grouped into one of three categories, each eligible for cash prizes:

1. Laboratory Research
2. Applied Research
3. Policy & Practice

All participants will receive a certificate of merit that acknowledges that they were selected to represent their home departments in this scientific poster competition. The participant with the best judges' score in each of the three categories will receive a check from the Delta Omega Society Alpha Chapter fund in the amount of $500. The second- and third-place winners, in each of the categories, will receive checks for $300 and $200 respectively. The Society reserves the right to recognize additional participants whose scores were not appreciably different from the third-place score. The overall winner will be supported to travel to present his or her poster at the next APHA conference.

All winners and participants will be recognized publicly at the annual Delta Omega Society induction ceremony. Prizes and certificates for the prize winners and participants will be distributed at that time.

Submit your poster here. 

Rules and Instructions for the Delta Omega Scholarship Competition

The Delta Omega Scholarship Endowment was established by members of the Alpha Chapter of the Delta Omega Honorary Public Health Society.

The purpose of the endowment is to promote outstanding scholarship and research by providing support to individual students whose research proposals demonstrate merit. Only currently registered students or postdoctoral fellows from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health can apply for these scholarships, which are for up to $1,500 to defray all or part of the cost of a research project or scholarly activity. 4-6 scholarships are awarded each year.

ELIGIBILITY

Applicants must be currently registered students or postdoctoral fellows from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

All proposals must include a clear description of the project in the form of a brief abstract summary, and an itemized budget plan outlining how the monetary support will be used.

INSTRUCTIONS

• Complete the application form.
• The deadline to submit an application is Tuesday, April 15, 2025, at 11:59pm ET
• All questions regarding the scholarship may be directed to the Office of Alumni Relations at 410-614-0794 or DeltaOmegaAlpha@jhu.edu. 

JUDGING

All applications are reviewed competitively by a panel of Society members, who will assign priority scores based on a judgment about each project's feasibility, scientific or scholarly merit, and significance for public health.

SCORING OF ABSTRACTS

Abstracts will be judged on:

• Significance. Does this study address an important problem? If the aims of the application are achieved, how will scientific knowledge be advanced? What will be the effect of this study's findings on the concepts or methods that drive this field?
• Approach. Are the design, methods, and analyses adequately developed, well-integrated, and appropriate to the aims of the project?
• Innovation. Does the project employ novel concepts, approaches, or methods? Does the project challenge existing paradigms or develop new methodologies or technologies?

Abstracts will be scored by a 4-level rating system, rating each of the above criteria separately: 1-Outstanding, 2-Excellent, 3-Good, 4-Fair

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

Students will submit their abstracts to one of the following categories:

• Applied Research, which use or develop quantitative or qualitative approaches to address public health problems.
• Policy and Practice, which put public health principles and knowledge into practice.
• Laboratory Research, which involve basic science research.

All abstracts must follow the following format:

1. Introduction/Importance, Goals
2. Methods
3. Significance
4. Allocation of expenses by category up to $1500.00. Please indicate any additional available funding that will be used to carry out research. 

Please note: Your abstract proposal may not exceed two pages (single spaced), and your budget must be limited to one page, with at least one half inch margins on the top, bottom, left, and right of all pages. Maximum of 3 pages.

Submit your scholarship application here.