By Mike Ralston, PRSA Health Academy Committee

Mark your calendars and register now for the 2010 PRSA Health Academy Conference, April 14-16 in Chicago. This is the PRSA Health Academy’s premier event on health care public relations, which draws 200 to 250 mid to senior level health care communications and public relations professionals. This is an affordable conference that offers packed programming starting at a price of $565 for members to $725 for non-members. Register by March 13 and save $100! http://www.prsa.org/Conferences/HealthAcademy/register.html.

This year’s speakers and sessions include:

· Communications heads from the FDA who will discuss the role social media is playing in a regulated environment

· A panel of top notch medical/health journalists talking about what the traditional news environment is like in a 2.0 world

· Communicating Complexity, Simply: The U.S. Health Care System for Health Communicators

· One Problem/Two Solutions: Harnessing iPhones and PDAs to Reach Your Audience

· Cutting Through the Clutter: Creating Messages That Drive Agendas

· Promoting Health News and Innovation: Successful Tactics

· New Frontiers to Patient-to-Patient Communications

· Stakeholder Engagement in the Era of Responsibility

· Making Your Brand Word of Mouth

· Engaging Employees: Utilizing an Overlooked Resource to Sharpen a Competitive Edge

· The Reputational Risks in the Health Care Social Media Space

· Doing More with Less: Practical Pointers and the Upside to the Shrinking PR Budget

You can follow me on Twitter (@mikeralstonkc) for all the weekly updates related to the conference.