Meetings and Conferences
I cover national and international meetings to produce a range of products including features, newsletters, symposium reports and press releases. One thing I'm no good at, and never was, is placing articles. I know, it costs me.
The impact of antipsychotics on patient wellbeing
This large one-day conference in Birmingham was organised by a manufacturer of an atypical antipsychotic drug to air issues about the impact of treatment on the wellbeing of patients with schizophrenia, building on a recent Government-supported initiative. I was commissioned to write an 8-page report of the proceedings for distribution as a journal supplement. Bit of a delay getting the Powerpoint presentations and I went through three drafts to get the pitch right but it worked out well.
New bronchodilator for COPD
As part of an educational programme for primary care, I was invited by a PR agency to the European Respiratory Conference in Glasgow to cover a satellite symposium on this novel treatment. Based on the presentations and supporting publications we produced a couple of scientific reviews and two advertorials for the GP press to explain its mechanism of action and its role in management. After a second meeting in London, we highlighted the health burden associated with COPD and how this treatment could help to reduce it.
Two very big meetings
The biggest meetings I ever covered were the 2008 World Diabetes Federation Summit for South-East Asia in Chennai, India, and the 2010 Summit for Latin America in Salvador de Bahia, Brazil. Chennai was particularly memorable. We arrived on the day of the Mumbai massacre and spent the entire conference under armed guard. It was also the tail end of a cyclone and much of the area around the hotel was under several feet of water. Nevertheless, with speakers from national and local governments as well as the WHO, the meeting was a great success and culminated in the Chennai Call for Action
EuroPD in Strasbourg
A Japanese publisher needed a writer to cover the 2009 European Peritoneal Dialysis meeting in Strasbourg. The idea was to summarise in 600 words each presentation identified as most important by Japanese specialists and get the text to the client as quickly as possible. Peritoneal dialysis could reasonably be described as technical and I can recommend the Oxford Handbook of Dialysis for bedtime reading. There's some excellent chocolate and a very good Italian restaurant in the French quarter of Strasbourg (but I'm not sure I could find it again).