Call for Proposals

We are pleased to announce the call for proposals for the 20th International Conference on Communication, Medicine, and Ethics (COMET), which will be hosted by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, on 13-15 July. A Pre-COMET Masterclass is scheduled for 12 July 2022. The conference will be held online.

The COMET conference aims to bring together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds involving various healthcare specialties and the human and social sciences. A special emphasis is on the dissemination of ongoing research in language/discourse/communication studies in relation to healthcare education, patient participation and professional ethics.

The submission for proposals opens on 25 November 2021. All proposals must be submitted by Monday 28 February 2022. Note: Call for Proposals deadline has passed and late submissions will not be considered.

COMET 2022 will feature the following plenary speakers:  

  • Professor Raanan Gillon, Imperial College, London, UK
  • Professor Richard Street, Texas A&M University, USA 
  • Professor Robyn Woodward-Kron, Melbourne Medical School, University of Melbourne, Australia

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 
  • Healthcare in Asia 
  • Health Literacy 
  • Health Technologies and Medical Informatics 
  • 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 

Submit your proposal online   

Proposals include panels, individual presentations (oral or poster) and work-in-progress roundtables.  

For all submissions, please use the corresponding submission template which can be downloaded from the conference website.   

  • Panel submission
  • Individual submission (oral or poster)
  • Work-in-progress roundtable

  1. PANELS

    Panels should address a common theme, content or methodological area, and will be scheduled for 90 minutes. 

    In addition to individual proposals (no more than 250 words each), please also submit an overview description of no more than 300 words highlighting the panel’s content and objectives. Provide information about the panel members and the coordinator, stating full institutional affiliations and e-mail addresses. 

  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 physically or online 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 ROUNDTABLE

    Proposals for work-in-progress roundtables should be no more than 250 words targeted at oral presentation. The roundtables 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: Monday 28 February 2022

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 authors are urged to attend to the following criteria which 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 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 before mid-April 2022. Following formal acceptance, the responsible (presenting) authors must register participation prior to the finalisation of the conference programme. Early registration rates apply till 16 May 2022.

Please send an email to comet2022.conf@polyu.edu.hk for further details regarding submission guidelines or for additional information about the conference.  

Lastly, given the current circumstances regarding COVID-19 in Hong Kong and globally, we are planning COMET 2022 as a hybrid event. We will regularly update our decision.