The second HERON Conference will be held on 31 October 2018 in London at the Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre. HERON is an international public engagement network funded by the Wellcome Trust and aimed at people involved in action and research to tackle inequalities in health and health service use. It brings together people from the community, local charities, public health researchers, and health practitioners with a vision of having a collaborative approach to research in the community.

The 2018 HERON conference will include presentations, workshops, discussion, art and more on the theme of ‘current and future directions in health equity research and action’ from researchers, community organisations, and healthcare representatives. The conference will take a future-oriented perspective to explore how we can learn from present research and tackle inequalities through future research and action.

Call for individual presentations

We welcome abstracts and brief summaries using a range of methodological approaches from academics and non-academics for both individual oral or poster presentations on the conference theme in the following categories:

• Discrimination and health or health service use
• Intersectional approaches in health equity research and action
• Marginalised social status and health
• Young people’s health
• Future directions in health equity research

Abstract and brief summaries should be maximum of 4,000 characters (including spaces). Please indicate the category in which you would like your submission to be considered and whether you would like to present orally or as a poster. Please provide sufficient information in the main text for evaluation of the merit of the presentation, indicating how it links to the overall conference theme.

Call for workshop sessions

In parallel, the conference will run workshops related to current topics in health inequalities research. We invite group workshop contributions from academics and non-academics on the following themes:

• The role of research and advocacy, potentials, and pitfalls
• Current thinking in health inequities theories
• Community-based participatory research/young people’s participatory action research
• The future of health inequities intervention design and evaluation

We invite group applications to host a workshop lasting 1.5 hours on any of the conference workshop themes. Workshop contributions should be maximum of 4,000 characters (including spaces). Please indicate the category in which you would like your submission to be considered. Please provide sufficient information for evaluation of the merit of the workshop indicating how it links to the overall conference theme and how the audience will be engaged.

Submit your abstract here.

Please send submissions electronically via the abstract submission form by the submission deadline, 16 July 2018. Applications received after the deadline will not be considered. Applicants will be notified of a decision by 06 August 2018. A limited number of travel bursaries for travel costs within the UK will be available to graduate, postgraduate and postdoctoral (maximum of two years after PhD completion) student/researcher presenters. Further information will be made available to presenters on acceptance of proposed abstracts.

Further information regarding the conference, including registration and submission guidelines can be found on our website or by following us on Twitter @HeronNetwork