The Social Marketing in Public Health Conference, now in its eighteenth year, is designed for public health professionals and health educators in a variety of settings including CDC, state and local health departments, other public health agencies, and non-profit organizations. Participants usually include CDC designees, program planners and administrators, health educators, health communication and health information specialists, researchers, academicians, and graduate students.

Main Conference: The Main Conference, June 20 & 21, 2008, offers a combination of plenary presentations by internationally recognized social marketing experts on topics of interest to learners at all levels. Concurrent sessions, both invited and selected from responses to the "Call For Abstracts," round out the agenda with specific examples of how social marketing has been applied in public health settings. These sessions are balanced between introductory and more advanced audiences. The specific topics and speakers are selected to elaborate on key elements of the social marketing approach and to illustrate how social marketing can be applied to a wide variety of public health topics. The Main Conference moves into a second day with additional plenary sessions, followed by in-depth training workshops at the introductory and intermediate levels.

Networking is a Key Goal: The conference is designed to offer numerous informal opportunities for networking with some of the country's best social marketers.

Conference Objectives:

At the end of the social marketing training academy, participants will be able to:

• Define social marketing;
• List five distinctive features of social marketing;
• Describe the six steps that comprise the social marketing process;
• Articulate the major tasks to be accomplished during the initial planning phase;
• List at least two types of research used to design a social marketing campaign;
• Describe at least two decisions that must be made in developing a campaign strategy; and
• List at least five new professional contacts

At the end of the Overall Conference, participants will be able to:

• Critically comment on the current status of the application of social marketing
  practice nationally and internationally;
  
• Discuss three examples of advanced application of social marketing practice;
  
• Explain at least five programs in which social marketing was used as a tool for development and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of those particular applications;
  
• Apply the primary theoretical and applied principles of at least one training module;
  
• Suggest at least one new collaborative project or application; and
  
• List at least three new professional contacts that have the potential to collaborate on current or future projects, or to assist with problem-solving (this objective is attained primarily through the formal and informal networking designed into this program).