Greetings, and welcome to the CSOEMA website!  Our Central States Occupational and Environmental Medicine Association is consistently one of the largest ACOEM component societies, and actively serves over 400 members from our ten “central” states: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.

CSOEMA will continue in its efforts to offer high-quality educational programs and seminars.  We invite feedback regarding the seminars and seminar topics, and we are always receptive to new topics/speakers that may serve to further enhance the educational experience of our members.

I hope you see these three major benefits to belonging and participating in CSOEMA:

1. Continuing Education: CSOEMA is committed to presenting topics of interest to providers in occupational health. Beside our national ACOEM, members often find few other places to obtain needed CME, MOC points and valuable updates in occupational health practice.
2. Networking: By meeting with other occupational health practitioners we learn from each other the finer points of occupational health practice.
3. Promoting our Specialty: By raising our visibility and attracting new providers, we raise the visibility of Occupational Medicine as a specialty. And as others understand the contributions of other “Occ Med” providers, they see the value of what you do for worker health. Engaging as an active member of CSOEMA and ACOEM also promotes the visibility and recognition of our specialty.

The major activity of our organization is organizing educational conferences, which supports all three of these benefits. This not only promotes scholarship for OM and provides CME, the conferences are a way of our members to meet and share ideas, for benchmarking, and to gain support for our own professional practice.

With that being said, we can and should always continue to improve the organization.  If you are willing and able to help the organization, please do not hesitate to let me know (or you can speak to anyone on the Executive Committee, Board of Governors, Susan, etc.).  A simple first step might include offering to co-chair one of our semi-annual educational seminars.  What’s nice about this is that it is a time-limited commitment yet is a great experience and one which you can be assured will be appreciated by your fellow members.

Please check back to our website on a periodic basis for any updates regarding our organization.  As always, please let me know if there are ways for us to make our group even better for you.  It is truly an honor for me to serve as CSOEMA’s president, and I am grateful for the opportunity to serve you.  I thank you for your support and I look forward to seeing you soon at one of our meetings!