The American Hospital Association (AHA) is an organization that promotes the quality provision of health care by hospitals and health care networks through such efforts as promoting effective public policy and providing information related to health care and health administration to health care providers and the public. Founded in 1898 and hosting offices in Chicago, Illinois and Washington, D.C., the AHA hosts a Resource Center with more than 47,000 books on health care (some services fee based) and maintains an extensive, frequently updated Health Planning and Administration (HEALTH) database, which provides information related to health care unrelated to clinical treatment. More than 5,600 organizations and 41,000 individuals are members of the AHA.

In 1870, there were only about a hundred general hospitals in the United States, but the institution was growing rapidly. Hospital administrators formed an organization called "The Association of Hospital Superintendents of the United States and Canada", which held its first meeting in 1899 in Cleveland, Ohio, in which city seven of the eight superintendents in attendance were based. The organization was promoted by publisher Del Sutton, whose journal The National Hospital Sanitarium Record was adopted by the new group in 1900, gradually coming under control of the organization until it was replaced by the organization's own publication, The Modern Hospital.

Charles "Charlie" Dent (born May 24, 1960) is the U.S. Representative for Pennsylvania's 15th congressional district, serving since 2005. He is a member of the Republican Party. The district includes all of Northampton County, most of Lehigh County, and small parts of Berks and Montgomery Counties.

Dent was born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He is a 1978 graduate of Allentown's William Allen High School. He received a Bachelor's in International Politics from Pennsylvania State University in 1982 and a Masters in Public Administration from Lehigh University in 1993. He is a member of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity.

He previously worked as a development officer for Lehigh University, an industrial electronics salesman, a hotel clerk, and an aide to U.S. Representative Donald L. Ritter.

Before being elected to the United States Congress, Dent was a member of the State Legislature for 14 years. He represented Pennsylvania's 132nd house district from 1991 to 1999 after unseating Democratic incumbent Jack Pressman in a heavily Democratic district in 1990. In 1998, Dent won an open 16th District Senate seat when Democrat Roy Afflerbach (who later served as Mayor of Allentown from 2002 to 2006) retired to take up an ultimately unsuccessful bid for Congress.