6th November 2023
We are delighted to announce that our call for abstracts for our 2024 iHV Evidence-Based Practice Conference is now open. Next year’s conference “A Healthier Future” will be held at King’s House Conference Centre in Manchester on 3 July 2024 – save the date!
The conference provides a great opportunity to present your work on a UK platform. We hope that you will join us and showcase the very best of health visiting. See details below on how to submit your abstract.
Next year’s EBP conference will focus on addressing health inequalities, a topic that has never been more poignant, with more babies and children experiencing poorer outcomes and living in poverty than ever before. How can we ensure a healthier future, where all babies and children can thrive? How can we use the best available evidence and research to reduce health inequalities and strengthen health visiting practice?
Our conference will provide a platform for local, national, and international experts and speakers to come together and share excellence in health visiting practice, innovation and the latest research to address health inequalities.
The presentations and workshops will reflect the breadth of health visiting practice, within a “whole system” public health approach, with the aim to equip health visiting practitioners with new knowledge and skills to address key challenges in prevention and early intervention work with babies, children, and families.
What are the benefits of presenting at the iHV conference:
It’s an excellent opportunity for you to:
- Raise your own profile as a speaker at a UK-wide conference.
- Raise the profile of your organisation.
- Showcase your work (including preliminary project work) – gain constructive feedback to help shape future activity.
- Connect, collaborate and learn from other practitioners working in the field of health visiting and family public health.
- Add your experience of presenting to your CV and boost your career.
Top-scoring abstract authors have the chance to present their work as a concurrent session speaker, or even a plenary talk in the main auditorium (depending on submissions).
Abstract Themes/Topics
We encourage submissions that support the conference theme of reducing health inequalities through health visiting (or integrated working involving health visiting) – focused on prevention and early intervention during the preconception period, pregnancy, 0-5 years and early parenthood.
Submissions are open to individuals and teams, including researchers, educators and clinicians who have led work in the UK that aligns with our conference theme.
(Non-UK applicants will also be considered where there is demonstrable transferable learning).
Entrants must be able to demonstrate their work has made an important improvement in promoting and protecting the health of babies, young children and families.
Examples might include initiatives to:
- Tackle key public health priorities to reduce health inequalities.
- Improve access, experience and outcomes – particularly for individuals and groups who do not currently experience easy access to services and consequently often experience the worst health outcomes.
- Develop evidence-driven health visiting service models and/ or integrated ‘whole system’ approaches that include health visiting, to improve health and reduce inequalities – including initiatives that tackle the wider determinants of health, like poverty.
If you are resubmitting a project or innovation that you have entered in previous years, please ensure you show the changes made within the last 12 months as the peer-review team will compare your submission to previous years.
Conference themes may include, but are not limited to, the current priority public health topics for health visiting:
- Transition to parenthood, including preconception care
- Breastfeeding
- Perinatal mental health (mothers, fathers, and partners)
- Infant and child mental health
- Healthy nutrition, physical activity, and healthy weight
- Managing minor illnesses, building health literacy and prevention of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)
- Reducing unintentional injuries
- The uptake of immunisations
- Primary prevention and health promotion in oral health
- Child development 0-5 years, including speech, language and communication and school readiness
- Sleep
- Children with developmental disorders, disabilities and complex health needs
- Tobacco, alcohol and substance misuse in the perinatal period
- Healthy couple relationships
- Teenage parenthood
Conference fees
There is no fee for making a submission. However, if your submission is accepted, the presenting author will be required to attend the conference in-person and pay the discounted speaker registration fee that applies to them.
To qualify for the discounted speaker rate, you will need to ensure the conference booking form and payment is made by 28 March 2024. Successful abstract authors are responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.
What are the presentation opportunities?
- A short oral breakout session presentation
- An oral concurrent presentation
- A plenary keynote presentation
If your abstract is accepted, the event organisers will decide which format it will take and will cater to your preference where appropriate and possible.
Abstract timeline:
- Submissions: The abstract submission deadline is 19 January 2024.
- Notifications: After an iHV peer-review process, participants will be informed of acceptance of abstracts for either oral keynote/concurrent presentation, or poster presentation, by 2 February 2024.
How do I submit my abstract?
- Guidelines for submission can be found below
- We have an online submission form which enables you to enter:
- Your basic details
- Select your preference for oral presentation (concurrent/plenary keynote) presentation type, or oral poster presentation, or either
- Relevant conference theme or topic
- Title and summary of your presentation
