Division of Health Psychology Conference was a great success

We’ve received the delegate feedback on the British Psychological Society’s (BPS) Division of Health Psychology (DHP) Annual Conference held here at Aston University 9-11th September and it’s overwhelmingly positive. In total 246 delegates attended, 70 of whom were Chartered Health Psychologists and 39 were Health Psychologists in Training as well as others from different backgrounds. This means we had just the right mix between those who excel in the field, those doing work in related areas, and those who are learning the ropes to become the future researchers and practitioners in health psychology.

Not only was the scientific programme particularly fascinating this year – with excellent, well received keynote speeches from Professors Karina Davidson (Columbia University), Jonathan Smith (Birkbeck, University of London), Ronan O’Carroll (University of Stirling) and Mike West (Aston Business School).

The conference also attracted press attention. Medical News Today ran with “Psychologists meet in Birmingham to focus minds on health”, the Telegraph with “Diet drugs work ‘because they make people eat more healthily’”. We were particularly proud of the press coverage of the research on binge drinking conducted by Dr Richard Cooke, a Psychologist from the School of Life & Health Sciences; “Young people fuzzy about drinking limits” appeared in Medical News Today and Zikkir.com and “Anti-binge drinking message not getting through” in The Publican.

We were also pleased to receive positive feedback about Aston as a venue and in particular its city centre location. The Banqueting Suite, at the Council House, hosted an excellent hot buffet for the conference dinner followed by a disco which got most people down on the dance floor – the organising team had a particularly good time! We would like to thank Professor Helen Griffiths for giving delegates a warm welcome to Aston, Sam Smith and Reshma Patel from the BPS, Caroline Henderson from the DHP, Kasia Czarnecka from Conference Aston, the local conference organising committee - Rachel Shaw, Helen Pattison, Richard Cooke and Rachael Powell, Jon Wood, who supplied invaluable technical support, and the stewards - Adam Jowett, Christian Borg-Xuereb, Danielle Smith, Sam Waldron, Ying Zhang and Fozia Ikram for their contributions to a smooth-running conference.

Photos from the conference