Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence „For a Bet­ter Pub­lic Health and Health­care: Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Solutions”
Mon­te­ca­ti­ni Terme (Italy)
13–15 March 2026

Good Health and Well-being is one of the 17 UN Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals, close­ly inter­con­nect­ed with social chal­lenges, such as pover­ty and inequal­i­ty. Avoid­able poor health and inequal­i­ties in health and access to health­care per­sist across all coun­tries, while health­care costs con­tin­ue to rise. This con­fer­ence aims to stim­u­late mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary think­ing and action to devel­op solu­tions that grasp the oppor­tu­ni­ties offered by tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, while tack­ling the socio-eco­nom­ic deter­mi­nants of health and the effects of envi­ron­men­tal challenges.

Sus­tain­able health­care solu­tions and effec­tive pub­lic health deliv­ery require more than just stat­ed com­mit­ments — they demand con­crete action, inno­v­a­tive think­ing and sus­tained col­lab­o­ra­tion across sec­tors to enable a good patient expe­ri­ence and ensure effi­cient and sus­tain­able health ser­vices. This Inter­na­tion­al Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Con­fer­ence will bring togeth­er actors in the inter­con­nect­ed fields of pub­lic health, health care and envi­ron­ment to inves­ti­gate the state of health poli­cies and ser­vices across dif­fer­ent fields.
A key objec­tive is to devel­op syn­er­gies between aca­d­e­m­ic research, the man­age­ment of the phys­i­cal envi­ron­ment, pub­lic health deliv­ery, health providers, pub­lic and pri­vate investors and pol­i­cy mak­ers. The aim is to stim­u­late an inte­grat­ed approach to address both imme­di­ate chal­lenges and long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals, improv­ing effi­cien­cy, resilience and ser­vice acces­si­bil­i­ty to all com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers, while pro­mot­ing a greater focus on reduc­ing demand upstream through appro­pri­ate pre­ven­tive approach­es in the phys­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and psy­choso­cial environment.

The Con­fer­ence will devel­op through work­shops and ple­nary ses­sions focused on three core areas and the com­ple­men­tary ways in which they impact the effi­cien­cy and resilience of pub­lic health poli­cies and health­care sys­tems, and people’s health and well­be­ing in a holis­tic sense. 

The three inter­con­nect­ed core areas are:
(1) Tack­ling Sys­temic Health­care Costs and Health­care Access;
(2) Pub­lic Health and the Phys­i­cal and Socio-eco­nom­ic Environment;
(3) Dig­i­tal Health Inno­va­tion and Respon­si­ble AI in Health Systems.

Fur­ther Details and Updates are avail­able at: Inter­na­tion­al Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Health Con­fer­ence 2026 | inter­na­tion­al urban sym­po­sium – ius

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Stu­dent Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy Conference
Edin­burgh Cen­tre for Med­ical Anthropology

First week of May 2026

After the suc­cess of last year’s con­fer­ence, the Stu­dents of Med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh will be hold­ing our annu­al stu­dent-focussed event in the first week of May 2026. With the rise of AI tech­nol­o­gy and the real­i­ties of liv­ing in the infor­ma­tion age, this year we are call­ing for all things Tech­nocene. This could be dig­i­tal ethno­gra­phies, using dig­i­tal tools to improve pub­lic access to research, a thought piece on the place of anthro­pol­o­gy in the cur­rent world, etc.

Stu­dents can get involved by sim­ply attend­ing, a 3–5 minute light­ning talk or a longer pre­sen­ta­tion about their interest/research, or get­ting involved in plan­ning a work­shop. It’ll be a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for stu­dents (and staff!) to net­work and hear about one another’s research. Please use this attached form to reg­is­ter your inter­est, and any fur­ther updates will be sent via email. Reg­is­tra­tion will be open until Mon­day 16th March.

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Call for papers: Robots for Care: Explor­ing Down­stream Socio-Eth­i­cal Effects & Upstream Inter­ven­tions, Work­shop @ HRI 2026

🗓️ Sub­mis­sion dead­line: Feb­ru­ary 9, 2026 (AoE)
🗓️ Work­shop date: March 16, 2026, Morn­ing GMT
🙌 Work­shop for­mat: Hybrid and interactive
🔗 Work­shop web­site: https://healthrobotsworkshop.github.io

This is an invi­ta­tion for con­tri­bu­tions to the work­shop „Robots for Care: Explor­ing Down­stream Socio-Eth­i­cal Effects and Upstream Inter­ven­tions” held in con­junc­tion with the ACM/IEEE Inter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Human–Robot Inter­ac­tion (HRI 2026).

The con­text: Robots hold poten­tial to expand acces­si­bil­i­ty to dis­abled com­mu­ni­ties, such as by pro­vid­ing phys­i­cal or cog­ni­tive assis­tance, and enabling new ways of par­tic­i­pat­ing in social activ­i­ties. They also can sup­port health­care work­ers with ancil­lary tasks and care deliv­ery, to sup­port them work­ing at the top of their license. How­ev­er, the real-world deploy­ment of robots across these con­texts can cre­ate social, eth­i­cal, and orga­ni­za­tion­al chal­lenges (e.g., down­stream effects). They may under­mine the agency of dis­abled peo­ple, dis­rupt care deliv­ery, shift roles, and dis­place labor.

Our aim: Bring togeth­er mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary stake­hold­ers to exam­ine these down­stream effects and explore how they might be mit­i­gat­ed through upstream inter­ven­tions of design, research, and policy.

How to con­tribute: We wel­come short con­tri­bu­tions dis­cussing top­ics rel­e­vant to the work­shop. Top­ics include, but are not lim­it­ed to:

Eth­i­cal, legal, and social impli­ca­tions of robots in clin­i­cal or assis­tive contexts
Crit­i­cal reflec­tions on mis/alignments between design goals and impacts of robots on dis­abled communities
Upstream inter­ven­tions at the meso or macro lev­el (e.g., com­mu­ni­ty pro­grams, par­tic­i­pa­to­ry research, policies)
Com­mu­ni­ty-based research practices
Expe­ri­ence reports or deploy­ment insights from con­texts including:

Social­ly assis­tive robots

Cog­ni­tive­ly assis­tive robots
Phys­i­cal­ly assis­tive robots
Hos­pi­tal deployed robots (e.g., deliv­ery, san­i­ta­tion, surgery)
Reha­bil­i­ta­tion robotics

We par­tic­u­lar­ly encour­age sub­mis­sions that sur­face lived expe­ri­ences, or cross-dis­ci­pli­nary insights that may be under­rep­re­sent­ed in tra­di­tion­al aca­d­e­m­ic venues.

Writ­ten sub­mis­sions will be post­ed on our web­site, and pre­sent­ed inter­ac­tive­ly dur­ing a poster ses­sion. There will also be oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­tribute to a fol­low-up jour­nal spe­cial issue.

Poten­tial Atten­dees: We encour­age aca­d­e­mics, non-aca­d­e­mics, and peo­ple with/without affil­i­a­tions to par­tic­i­pate in the work­shop. Sub­mit­ting a paper is not manda­to­ry to attend. The work­shop is designed to be inter­ac­tive and par­tic­i­pa­to­ry, and we are inter­est­ed in wel­com­ing peo­ple from many back­grounds. The work­shop will be hybrid to sup­port accessibility.

We appre­ci­ate your help in shar­ing this work­shop with rel­e­vant parties.

✉️ Con­tact: healthrobotsworkshop@gmail.com

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