Dear MOEMA members: Happy 2020. I want to take a moment to thank all of you that strive to improve the health, safety, and wellness of the Occupational Medicine population. We truly do make a difference many of you can tell by the impact we make across the state. We enter the new decade with opportunities and challenges. I would like to encourage more member participation in committees and boards. I am pleased that we have been able to reactivate the Educational Committee who has done a fantastic job of putting together our conference for 2020. For those of you thinking about contributing, please reach out to me or any board member. We would love to hear from you. As I have mentioned before, an incalculable benefit is belonging to and networking with your peers. We all benefit from our collective expertise and experience. Service to the specialty remains important. We need advocates to help keep Occupational Medicine moving forward. Our specialty is more relevant than ever with novel pathogen emergence, PFAS, and other environmental contaminants infiltrating our food and water supply, and the ever-ongoing changes to the work place. The board would like to see more of our members eligible for the title of Fellow of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. To that end, service with MOEMA will help satisfy the requirement to provide service to the specialty. As I mentioned earlier, our conference this year promises to be a good one with a variety of topics and speakers to benefit the practicing occupational clinician. For those of you with friends and colleagues that may do some occupational medicine in their primary care, please encourage them to come. Our conference is not limited just to MOEMA members. Topics this year under consideration include marijuana in the workplace, FMCSA Clearinghouse update, Pain management to satisfy physician licensing requirements, Food and Medicine, Emerging Pathogens, and many more. It will be held at the Midland Country Club with rooms at the H Hotel on 9 and 10 October of 2020. Finally, I will be at AOHC this year presenting as faculty. Many of our board members will be there as well. If you are in Washington DC this spring, please find us and introduce yourself. You can also reach out to me at moema.president@gmail.com. Thank you for your support of MOEMA and Occupational Medicine! Respectfully, Mike Michael M. Berneking, MD MOEMA President 2019 - 2020 |