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The first quarter of 2006 was busy, spent primarily on planning the AASCIF conferences and activities that will occur over the remainder of the year.
In January, we held the All Committees Meeting in Las Vegas. After “get to know each other” dinners the night before, the new and returning members of the ten AASCIF standing committees spent most of the day on January 12th outlining their committee objectives for this year. Many of the committees are planning specialty workshops in the summer and fall to address topics relevant to their particular areas of interest. Each committee will also contribute articles of interest to us all for publication in the AASCIF newsletter. You have already seen some of this excellent work in the first quarter’s newsletter, and more is included in this newsletter. You can view each committee’s 2006 objectives in the Members section of the AASCIF website. Thanks again to all of you who are volunteering your time and expertise to the important work our committees do; we all benefit from your contributions.
Dennis Smith and his talented team at Missouri Employers Mutual are in the final preparation stages for our Annual Conference in Branson, Missouri. I hope you have marked your calendars to attend this important event June 18-22. Dennis and his team are planning an informative substantive agenda in a beautiful setting at Chateau on the Lake, overlooking Table Rock Lake. They have also planned some outstanding extracurricular activities for our free time. You can review detailed information on the conference in Branson on the AASCIF website as well.
Our Canadian friends also are planning their 2006 AWCBC Congress in St. Andrews, New Brunswick June 25-28. Their program promises presentations on topics of interest about workers’ compensation and health care issues both in Canada and the U.S. You can access detailed information at the AWCBC website.
Our individual organizations continue to face challenges on how to improve our performance in the future; we all are pursuing the best practices in important subjects such as safety, health care, claim handling, underwriting, financial dealings, and contingency planning for disasters, both natural and manmade. I look forward to working with all of you this year through AASCIF to help each other plan and execute effective strategic and operational approaches to dealing with all of these issues. The strength of AASCIF still is our ability to share information and expertise to help each other. With both the formal work that our committees will do this year and the informal networking we do with each other every week, we can all be optimistic about developing the tools we need to succeed even more in the future. Thank you all for your support of AASCIF.
I look forward to seeing many of you at the Annual Conference in Branson, and I hope you have a beautiful and successful spring.
Russell R. Oliver
AASCIF President
2005 - 2006
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