News > Education and training

This one-day CharityComms conference will examine how charities are successfully using social marketing to change behaviour and how you can research, plan, implement and evaluate your campaigns. With a mixture of inspirational case studies, advice and top tips, as well as a look at the latest methodologies, research and innovations, this conference aims to give you bags of ideas, practical skills and contacts to help you change the world.

One of the key challenges in the field of improvement in healthcare is write up your work so it will get accepted by high impact journals. Mary Dixon-Woods, Professor of Medical Sociology, University of Leicester will be exploring how to write up your research/improvement project for publication. Offering tips on academic writing and structuring papers, she will show how to make your manuscript interesting, engaging, and clear, how to target specific journals, and how to respond to referees' comments. The webinar is free and takes place on 22 November 2011.

The Institute of Innovation and Improvement is running a series of web seminars between now and Christmas aimed at helping you improve project management. One of these focuses on partnership working. During this seminar, Gary Lucking, Senior Associate with the Healthy Places, Healthy Lives programme at the NHS Institute, will talk about partnership working and how to make partnering activities more productive.The seminar takes place on November 24 2011.

A new internship programme in The King's Fund's policy directorate will give you the opportunity to work with the country's leading health policy analysts, gaining experience of conducting research and analysis to directly inform and improve health policy and practice in England. The position is salaried and based in London. The closing date for applications is 30 September 2011.

This one day conference from the Kings Fund discusses how the information strategy can offer an opportunity to drive improvements in information on quality and outcomes, fill the gaps, and assess the fitness of information flows for supporting the new NHS. The conference takes place in London on 12 October 2011.

The International Alliance of Patients' Organizations is pleased to announce the programme for the 5th Global Patients Congress: Achieving Patient-Centred Healthcare: Indicators of Progress and Success. The Congress will examine how to measure the extent to which patient-centred healthcare is being achieved around the world. Healthcare policy issues will be addressed including health literacy; patient safety; health technology assessment; chronic disease management and non-communicable diseases. The Congress takes place in London in March 2012.

The National Social Marketing Centre have this week launched an online e-learning course, A social marketing approach to behaviour change. Over seven modules, it follows the whole social marketing planning process from beginning to end. It guides you through how to scope, develop, implement, evaluate and follow-up an intervention to change or maintain behaviour. Modules include those on researching your audience and turning insight into action.

A public health conference which focuses on the theme of health inequities will be held this September in Wales. The Welsh Government's reducing inequities in health strategic action plan 'Fairer Health Outcomes for all' will provide a framework for the conference. Speakers include Dr Tony Jewell, Chief Medical Officer for Wales and Carwyn Jones, First Minister. The conference is free to attend for those working in Wales.

The King's Fund Annual Conference 2011 will look beyond current debate about structures and reforms to focus on how to improve the everyday business of delivering health and social care. The programme will include innovative, cost-effective and patient-centred solutions and will showcase the latest technologies; integrated care programmes; and care pathways, including learning from the best of health care internationally. 10% summer discount rates available until 31 August 2011.

Glyn Elwyn is Professor of Primary Care and Public Health at Cardiff University's School of Medicine. He has been working in the field of shared decision making for over a decade and has led shared decision making workshops in Europe and the USA regularly since 2001. Professor Elwyn is running this workshop, which is intended for health care professionals (any discipline) who want to learn how to develop and use shared decision making skills and who want to go on to teach others.