APHA 2026 welcomed thousands of public health professionals, students, advocates, policymakers and agency leaders to San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday. Funding cuts, federal policy decisions and misinformation involving public health have negatively affected the lives of millions of Americans, from children to the elderly, the opening report said. The APHA 2026 meeting was set up to discuss strategies and solutions to improve health and well-being for all ages.
This year’s theme is “Together We Thrive: Health Across the Lifespan.” The theme shaped the opening general session, which looked at longevity and health for all, rather than at one age group or one disease. Speakers returned to the same point from different angles: gains in lifespan have come from public health work, and more work is needed so that extra years are lived in good health.
APHA 2026 opening session in San Antonio
At the general opening session, APHA chief executive Georges Benjamin spoke about how the federal government has harmed America’s public health infrastructure, made unscientific changes to vaccination policy and led aggressive immigration actions against families. The report said APHA 2026 has risen to the fight by collaborating with other public health groups to battle the changes, including filing multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration, the report said.
“Our lawsuits have slowed them down for sure,” Benjamin said. He also said APHA will continue the fight, relating the resolve to what his father told him as a child about how to handle bullies: “Have no fear. They only have the power they are given.” He added: “Best way to deal with a bully? Punch him in the nose.”
APHA 2026 is also collaborating on developing programs to ensure health across the lifespan, which will build on past successes in American public health. Those past successes include vaccine development, safe water, seatbelt and helmet laws, and improved maternal health and reproductive health. The list was given in the opening report as examples of work that changed daily life, rather than as a full history of the field.
APHA 2026 and longer lives in America
Linda Fried, dean emerita of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and director of the Columbia Aging Center, pointed out how lifespan has increased in the United States by 30 years thanks to public health. In 1900, life expectancy was 47. Today it is 79, Fried said. That change covers a century of work on sanitation, vaccines, safer workplaces, road safety and other measures that were described in the session as public health successes.
More work is needed, Fried said, because Americans generally live a dozen years with disability. The figure points to a gap between living longer and living well for the whole of that longer life. Fried said the gap can change, adding: “Health across our long lives for all.” The sentence was presented in the session as the aim for the years ahead, rather than as a description of the present position.
At APHA 2026, San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz spoke about the importance of public health efforts in health and environment today to ensure healthy lives tomorrow. She said: “These are about choices and what we owe the next generation, a healthy place to live.” The remark placed local decisions on housing, environment and services alongside national policy, since a city mayor deals with the places where people live, work and travel each day.
Daily habits across a lifetime
At APHA 2026, Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy strategist, bioethicist and oncologist, offered simple ways to maintain health across the lifespan by instilling good habits in children. His list included healthier school lunches, making exercise a habit, mandatory school volunteering, healthy cooking taught to school-age children, no cellphones in schools, early-life encouragement to explore the arts, and routine childhood vaccinations.
Emanuel said: “Wellness is not the goal of life, but a means to a long, meaningful life.” He added: “You cannot do wellness one alcohol-free month a year. Wellness behaviors need to be sustained across decades, not months.” The point was that single short efforts do not match a lifetime pattern, and that habits formed in childhood can carry into adult life if they are kept up.
The APHA 2026 opening session brought those strands together in one room: legal action against federal changes, a record of longer lives, a warning about years lived with disability, and a set of daily habits for children. The APHA 2026 meeting continues with the work of turning that discussion into programs, and the opening report gave the theme for that work in its title: health across the lifespan, for all ages, in San Antonio and beyond.