April 2024 newsUpdate - Issue 166

• The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) is looking for a Head of Accreditation to lead its Accreditation team within the Regulation and Accreditation Directorate. One of the PSA’s key roles is to accredit registers of practitioners working in unregulated health and care roles through the Accredited Registers programme. There are currently 28 registers within the programme, covering approximately 130,000 registrants. The PSA is looking to continue to expand the assurance and public protection the programme provides, including through increasing awareness and recognition of the programme. The closing date for applications is 6 May. You can find out more here.
• The Research Council for Complementary Medicine (RCCM) Annual Conference, taking place online on 13 September 2024, is open for abstracts and registration. The conference will showcase UK research, especially from PhD, postgraduate, and early career researchers. The deadline for submitting abstracts is 1 June 2024. You can find out more here.
• The Shiatsu Society UK is currently seeking a self-organising enthusiastic part-time Virtual Manager to join their dynamic remote team. You can find out more here.

The Advertising Codes require that marketers hold robust documentary evidence, most likely in the form of trials on humans, before making objective claims about the benefits of CAM therapies.

There are innumerable amazing therapies available. It may be that a therapy is less well-known, meaning that robust clinical studies are not available. This means that objective treatment claims will not be permitted in ads. But fear not, marketers can still make claims about the hands-on nature of the therapy or its subjective or sensorial benefits. After all, these therapies provide great comfort for patients who often feel that conventional medicine alone doesn’t take account of them as a whole person.

Our AdviceOnline entries cover a number of different therapies – please do check to see if your treatment has an entry, as it will give you a good idea of currently acceptable claims. For bespoke advice on your non-broadcast ads, our Copy Advice team are also here to help."