Why the Academy of Health Information Professionals Matters to All MLA Members

Submitted by Tomi Gunn, Senior Manager, Community Engagement, MLA, and Barry Grant, Education Director, MLA

Note: For the next many months, Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP) members, Credentialing Committee members, chapter credentialing liaisons, and MLA staff will share their thoughts on the academy and their experiences as academy members. We kick off the series with a short piece on why the academy matters.

The second article in the series was written by Helen-Ann Brown Epstein, AHIP, FMLA.

A widely held professional credential serves those who hold the credential and the profession in which they are credentialed. The benefits of the Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP) to academy members are concrete and documented. Three salary surveys (2008, 2012, 2017) showed a 15%–18% average greater salary for academy members. In a 2016 survey of 560 academy members:

• 65% of respondents agreed that academy membership helped them advance their careers
• 50% reported that academy membership was required or recommended by an employer or supervisor
• 52% said that academy membership was required or recommended for a position they have held or applied for or a raise they sought or attained
• 95% agreed that academy membership shows their commitment to the profession and their professional accomplishments and skills to peers and others

See “Learn about AHIP” on the Academy of Health Information Professionals (AHIP) pages of MLANET for more about the benefits of academy membership.

The benefits of academy membership to the health information profession are not easily measured, but they may be as profound as the benefits to those holding the credential. In a 1948 Bulletin of the Medical Library Association article, “Certification: A Stage of Professionalism,” Mildred Jordan explained how a profession is served by having a certification. The purpose of certification, she wrote, “is to improve the standards of education and training of the group, thus assuring a higher level of service to the public, but also resulting ultimately in benefits to the group through increased prestige and social and financial status” (pp. 112–3). A professional certification raises the status of a profession.

Jordan wrote to support what would become the “Code for the Training and Certification of Medical Librarians,” which MLA passed the following year. The name and requirements of the professional credential for medical librarians has changed several times since then, but the value of the academy to the profession is just as Jordan described the value of certification 71 years ago. The more than 1,070 members of the Academy of Health Information Professionals are benefiting their careers and the health information profession.