COMET 2024 will include the following plenary speakers:
• Professor Anna Middleton (Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK)
• Professor Stefan Timmermans (The UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, USA)
• Professor Silvio Brusaferro (University of Udine, Italy)

and a special featured speaker:
• Professor Francesco Castelli (Rector of the University of Brescia, Italy)

CONFERENCE THEMES INCLUDE:

• Client-Professional Encounters (involving doctors, counsellors, nurses, pharmacists, dentists, speech and language therapists, psychotherapists, etc.)
• Communicating Risk and Uncertainty
• Communication Skills Training
• Distributed Expertise among Professionals and Clients
• Ethics and Communication
• Evidence in Diagnosis and Non-Diagnosis
• Health and Disability
• Health, Wellbeing and the Lifespan
• Health Literacy
• Health Technologies and Medical Informatics
• Heathcare Services and Organizations
• Interpreter Mediated Healthcare Delivery
• Intercultural Communication in Health
• Interprofessional Communication and Hospital Management Systems
• Media and Health Communication
• Medical Education
• Narratives of Illness Experience
• Public Understanding of Health and Illness
• Quality of Life and Quality of Care
• Representation of the Body
• Research Ethics
• (Shared) Decision Making
• Tailoring Health Messages
• Telemedicine
• Values and Responsibilities in Professional Practice

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Proposals include panels, individual presentations (oral or poster) and work-in-progress sessions.
Submit your proposal via e-mail with subject header “COMET 2024 Proposal” to comet2024@unibs.it

1. Panels
Panels should address a common theme, content or methodological area, and will be scheduled for 90 minutes or multiples of 90 minutes. A 90-minute panel usually includes 3 individual presentations, plus a brief introduction and possibly time allocated for a general discussion.
For panel submissions, please include a) an overview description of no more than 300 words highlighting the panel’s content and objectives, and including 3-5 key words; b) an abstract of no more than 250 words for each individual presentation within the panel. Also provide information about the panel members and the coordinator, including full institutional addresses and emails. Please indicate how many 90-minute slots you are requesting.

2. Individual papers (oral or poster)
Proposals for individual papers (no more than 250 words) must clearly indicate a preference for oral or poster presentation. Following the peer review process, the organisers will determine whether a proposal is selected for oral or poster presentation. Poster presenters must be present to discuss their work during the dedicated sessions. Oral presentations will typically be scheduled in sessions of 90 minutes, with 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation + 10 minutes for discussion) allocated to each individual presentation.

3. Work-in-progress sessions
Proposals for work-in-progress should be no more than 250 words targeted at oral presentation. The presentations will be in sessions of 90 minutes, with individual presentations lasting 30 minutes (15 minutes for presentation + 15 minutes for discussion). This format is particularly suitable for early career researchers pursuing doctoral and postdoctoral studies and for experienced researchers undertaking/planning pilot projects or interested in reporting preliminary results. Please indicate clearly if your proposal falls into this category.

Proposal submission deadline: 15 January 2024

PROPOSAL SELECTION CRITERIA
All proposals undergo a double-blind peer-review process.

Please note that COMET conference policy is one main oral presentation per author. You may choose to submit more than one proposal, but normally only one proposal will be accepted for oral presentation. Any additional accepted proposals may be presented as poster(s).

There is no fixed format for writing proposals but we suggest the following structure: Background (including findings from and absences in previous literature); Aim/Objective (including research question); Methodology (research design, type of data, participants, analytical framework); Results/Findings; and Conclusion (including practical relevance).

Please note that the following criteria will form the basis for peer review:

• originality of the topic and its relevance to the conference
• background contextualisation of the study
• relationship between title and content
• structural organisation
• theoretical/methodological appropriateness
• clarity of claims and relevance

Individual panels are reviewed without anonymization in their entirety on the above criteria but also on the basis of their relevance to broader issues in communication, medicine, and ethics; the overall coherence of the proposal; and the usefulness of the panel to participants.

Decisions about acceptance/rejection will be communicated by mid-February, 2024. Following formal acceptance, the responsible (presenting) authors must register participation prior to the finalisation of the conference programme. Early registration opens in mid February 2024.

Please visit the COMET 2024 website https://comet2024.unibs.it/ or send an email to comet2024@unibs.it for further details regarding submission guidelines or for additional information about the conference.

Annalisa Zanola & Roxanne Barbara Doerr
On behalf of the Local Organizing Committee of COMET 2024