Keynote Speakers 

Rona Moss-Morris is Professor of Psychology as Applied to Medicine. She is Head of the Health Psychology Section at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.  She is a Fellow of Academy of Social Sciences, was awarded the British Psychological Society Division of Health Psychology’s Outstanding Contribution to Research Award in 2015 and the Multiple Sclerosis Society MS Research of the Year in 2014.  

She was National Advisor to NHS England for Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies for People with Long Term Conditions from 2011-2016. She was Editor-in-Chief of Psychology and Health from 2006-2010 and is an incoming Editor of Health Psychology Review.

She has been researching psychological factors that affect symptom experience and adjusting to long term conditions for the past 20 years. This research has been used to design theory based cognitive behavioural interventions, including web based interventions, for a range of patient groups. Randomised controlled trials to test the clinical and cost effectiveness of these interventions form a key component of her research.  More recently her focus is on rolling out interventions into real world practice. 

In a reflective phase a few years ago, I realised that although I had spent over a decade developing and testing theory-based interventions to improve clinical outcomes for a range of people with chronic long-term health conditions, none of these were part of routine practice. It was time to change tack.   I needed to engage with stakeholders both nationally and internationally to work towards real world impact. 

In this keynote, I will use the example of my work on irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) to track the journey from research to doing the work necessary to embed health psychology evidence-based practice into routine clinical care. IBS is a common and costly chronic gastrointestinal disorder that affects 10 – 22% of the population.   There is currently no clear standardised, evidenced based treatment for IBS.   Many patients continue to suffer ongoing symptoms and related disability despite being offered first line medications such as antispasmodics.   I will show how we have used the Medical Research Councils’ framework for developing complex interventions to develop an evidenced based treatment for IBS.   The first phase of the work involved developing an empirically based theory to explain perpetuation of symptoms and disability in IBS drawing from Leventhal’s common-sense model of illness and cognitive behavioural theories.  In the second phase we used this model to develop an IBS specific cognitive behavioural guided self-management approach.   In phase three, we evaluated this intervention in a pilot RCT comparing CBT self-management for IBS to standard medical care.  In phase 4 we developed a guided self-management web-based version of this treatment (Regul8) to make it more accessible to patients.  The final phase of this work was the ACTIB trial where we compared the clinical and cost effectiveness of web-based CBT and therapist delivered CBT with treatment as usual.   There were 558 patients randomised to the three arms in this trial and patients were followed up to one-year post randomisation.  We just completed a further 24 month follow up of the trial and a detailed qualitative and quantitative process analysis to test our original theory and to work out who responds best to treatment and why. The final phase of the work has involved engaging with national training programmes and the national health service to ensure the therapy is rolled-out nationally and a commercial partner to work towards roll-out worldwide. 

Dr. Alessandra Pokrajac-Bulian is a tenured full professor of Clinical and Health Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Rijeka, where she also serves as the Vice Dean for Science and International Affairs. Over the last decade, her field of research has focused on the negative health outcomes of increased body weight and obesity, such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and on the treatment of people with high body weight. In her research, she studies negative body image and body dissatisfaction in people with elevated body weight, and examines their binge eating, psychological problems, and beliefs about the disease. Dr. Pokrajac-Bulian has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. Her papers were published in Perceptual and Motor Skills, Sex Roles, European Eating Disorders Review, Eating and Weight Disorders – Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity, Maturitas, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. She has presented more than seventy papers at scientific conferences, forty of which were international. She was the editor-in-chief, and is currently an editorial board member of the Croatian scientific journal Psychological Topics, and the scientific journal Eating and Weight Disorders – Studies on Anorexia, Bulimia and Obesity. She received the award of the Croatian Psychological Society for her editorial work in Psychological Topics and for her book Obesity – Willingness to Change the Way of Life. For more than ten years, she has been head of the research project “Psychosocial Aspects of Obesity”, funded by the Croatian Ministry of Science and Education, and recently, funded by the University of Rijeka.

Obesity is a metabolic disease that is becoming a worldwide epidemic, with its prevalence increasing in almost all developed countries. It is accompanied by numerous comorbid potentially life-threatening disorders and substantial economic costs. Obesity aetiology is very complex and involves a multifaceted group of risk and protective factors. Recent studies of obesity have focused on examining how the underlying differences in neurobiology guide eating behaviour (e.g. impulsivity, craving and binge eating). Although it is necessary to consider the biological, psychological, and social perspectives to fully understand the phenomenon of obesity, special focus will be given to the psychological determinants of obesity. Since obesity research is most commonly correlational, the factors that precede the development of obesity are considered causes, while those that follow obesity are its consequences. In this exposure, I will present some of the most significant findings that show how psychological factors, such as responsiveness to emotional experience or self-imposed restraint eating increase the likelihood of obesity. Emphasis will also be placed on the consequences of obesity, such as the growing prevalence of mental illness, especially depression, anxiety and eating disorders. Treatment implications will also be presented.