Applications due September 30, 2008.
Any attendee to the conference is invited to submit an application to organize a scientific session during the meeting. These applications will be peer-reviewed by the conference Program Committee and those applications which are rated most meritorious and are consonant with the overall objectives of the conference will be invited to be part of the schedule of events.
The overall theme of the 2009 Conference is Collaborating to Promote Scientific Discovery. The five keynote addresses are representative of topics of special emphasis that the Program Committee wished to highlight. You may wish to review the list of keynote addresses in advance of writing your application.
There are three categories of Session:
1. Symposium
A symposium would typically consist of a group of state-of-the-evidence presentations on a specific theme by faculty experts in that field, moderated by a Chairperson. The review committee will look carefully at the importance and relevance of the theme of the proposed symposium and the expertise of the proposed faculty. A symposium could be either 1.5 or 3.0 hours in duration. In order to ensure inclusion of symposia in 3 high priority areas, the Program Committee has invited proposals from recognized leaders in three areas: Healing and the Placebo Effect, Whole Systems Research, and Shared Research Goals for Manual Treatments of Musculoskeletal and Soft Tissue Disorders. Therefore, additional proposals in these three areas are unlikely to be accepted.
2. Featured Discussion
This form of session would propose a discussion on a specific topic area that is highly relevant to researchers in the field of complementary and integrative medicine. Sessions could address a particular question of controversy (such as appropriate controls for acupuncture experiments) or dilemmas in a field (such as the challenges in obtaining and identifying various botanicals). Expert faculty can be included, but they would not typically give presentations. Rather, the focus of this session should be on audience involvement in a moderated discussion. The application should highlight a set of objectives the Organizer hopes to achieve by the conclusion of the session. A discussion would typically be 1.5 hours in duration.
3. Workshop
For this type of session, the review committee is looking for evidence of some type of hands-on training component. A workshop Organizer, working alone or with a team of faculty, should present a set of objectives which describe precisely what the audience is expected to do and learn as a result of attending this event. Examples might include introducing a particular approach to clinical trial construction, or statistical analysis, or demonstration of a new data tool. A workshop is typically 1.5 hours in duration.
The Session Submission Template provides more detailed information about the types of therapies that fall within the field of "complementary and integrative medicine."
Session applications must be submitted online prior to midnight (in your time zone), September 30, 2008. We reserve the right to return without review any applications submitted late. All presenters must register and pay to attend the meeting.
Questions relating to the composition of a scientific session should be relayed to Dan Cherkin, Chair of the Program Committee, via email at Cherkin.d@ghc.org.
Invitations to participate will be sent to the individual who submits the proposal (usually the Organizer) by February 1, 2009.
Instructions for Submission of Session Applications
Download and fill in the Application (in MS Word) as instructed on the template. Comments in red refer to the online submission form. Save this document to a personal drive.
DOWNLOAD SUBMISSION TEMPLATE (Word Document)
When you are certain the application template is complete and accurate, follow this link to enter the online submission system:
Follow the instructions in the Word template as to which data needs to be input into the online system. At the point where the system calls for uploading your abstract, you will upload your completed application template. Do not use the online system's abstract form.
The system will generate a confirmation when you press Complete. If for some reason you must correct an application or any other information after submission, you will need to email a corrected application with an explanation of the changes to the conference office at info@imconsortium-conference.org.