Psychology, Health and Medicine Conference 2026

Professor Diarmuid O’Donovan
Director of National Health Improvement, HSE Public Health

Opening address

Diarmuid O’Donovan is Director of National Health Improvement with HSE Public Health. He and his team work on addressing health inequalities and developing partnerships for a Health in All Policies approach to improving population health.

He trained in general practice and public health and worked in several countries in Africa. From 2019-2023 he was Professor of Global Health at Queen’s University Belfast. Before that he was Director of Public Health in HSE West and Senior Lecturer in Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Galway. He is one of the founders of the Irish Global Health Network, promoting education, research and advocacy on global health and development issues.

Professor O’Donovan researches and teaches on prevention, health equity and sustainability, and the right to health. 

Professor Rona Moss-Morris
Professor of Psychology as Applied to Medicine, King’s College London

Keynote: From theory toward impact: The COMPASS journey in enhancing care for long-term conditions

People with long-term medical conditions (LTCs) experience anxiety and depression at two to three times the rate of the general population, and mental health comorbidity is associated with poorer outcomes and substantially higher healthcare costs. Standard cognitive behavioural therapies (CBT) are often less effective for this group because they target mechanisms derived from models of primary mental health disorders rather than distress that arises in the context of chronic illness.

To address this gap, we developed a theoretical model of adjustment to LTCs and used it, together with extensive input from patients and healthcare professionals, to create COMPASS: Navigating Your Long-Term Condition, a transdiagnostic digital CBT programme tailored to illness-related distress. We also developed the Illness-Related Distress Scale to help clinicians identify patients most likely to benefit.

Current work includes developing and implementing illness-specific versions of COMPASS for multiple sclerosis and inflammatory bowel disease, as well as industry collaboration to support wider implementation. This keynote will discuss some of the barriers and facilitators to adoption, particularly for digital interventions, to maximise the likelihood that the research leads to meaningful change in patient care.

Professor Gerard Molloy
Professor of Health Psychology, University of Galway

Keynote: Medication use: navigating the complicated and the complex

Medicines use is best understood as a complicated behaviour that is embedded within complex systems. Complex systems produce emergent phenomenon that can be defined as properties that the components of the complex system do not have on their own and emerge only when the components interact in the wider system.

Some key emergent phenomena that can potentially influence medicines use e.g. the therapeutic relationship and trust between patient, healthcare providers and the healthcare industry, can be overlooked by too strong an emphasis on the behavioural specification in intervention design e.g. actor, action, context, target, time. When developing behavioural supports for optimal medicines use, there needs to be careful consideration of whether there is adequate time for the intervention and whether the intervention has the potential to disrupt the therapeutic relationship, particularly by undermining the trust between the patient and their healthcare provider.

Behavioural interventions, including medicines use interventions, should aim to enhance the therapeutic relationship between patients and healthcare providers by preserving and potentially enhancing trust in healthcare.

Professor Niall Pender
Head of Department of Health Psychology, School of Population Health, RCSI

Closing address

Niall Pender is Professor of Psychology and Head of Department of Health Psychology, School of Population Health, RCSI. He was Principal Clinical Neuropsychologist and Head of Department of Psychology at Beaumont Hospital for over 20 years. Professor Pender was Associate Professor in Neuropsychology, Trinity College Dublin since 2019 where he was course director of the first MSc in Clinical Neuropsychology in Ireland and led the neuropsychology research group.

Professor Pender was previously a consultant neuropsychologist at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability, London and a clinical neuropsychologist at the Maudsley Hospital, London. He trained in clinical psychology and neuropsychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London where he also completed his PhD in 2005. He is a past president of the Psychological Society of Ireland and founding member of the Division of Neuropsychology. His research focuses on the cognitive, behavioural and emotional consequences of neurological and neurosurgical conditions.