Welcome letter

Dear colleagues,

It is our great honor and great pleasure to invite you to the 8th Croatian Congress on Occupational Health with international participation entitled "Occupational Medicine – Coping with the Future", which will be held in Split from November 7 to 10, 2024.

Since our previous congress held in 2019, we have witnessed exceptional events at the world level. In 2020, we were hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, which in many ways changed the ways of life, business and work, and the ongoing crises in different parts of the world contribute to the migration of people, and thus to the employment of more and more foreign workers. Modern ways of doing business with ubiquitous digitization, robotization and psychosocial pressures confront us with the need for constant adjustments and development of the occupational medicine doctrine in order to continue adequately contributing to the main goal of our profession - preserving workers' health. Key to this is the further development of multidisciplinary teamwork with other professions in the field of occupational health and safety, primarily occupational safety experts, nurses, psychologists and doctors of medicine - specialists in family medicine and clinical professions. The development of medicine and the new challenges of business and work are accompanied by the need to adapt legislation in the field of occupational health and safety, and we are faced with frequent changes in legal regulations and the consequent need to adapt our practice.

A mitigating circumstance for our profession and its future is a significant number of young colleagues, residents in occupational and sports medicine, who at the beginning of 2024 founded the Section of ocupational and sports medicine residents and young doctors within the Croatian Society on Occupational Health of the Croatian Medical Association. An important task for all of us is their best possible education, both during specialization and later through continuous training programs.

We hope that the Congress will offer education and exchange of experiences through introductory lectures, oral and poster presentations, workshops and constructive discussions, and will provide some answers to the mentioned challenges. We would like the work of the Congress to be joined by specialists and residents in occupational and sports medicine, and many other stakeholders in the field of health and safety at work, our collaborators in everyday work - nurses, psychologists, occupational safety experts, but also members of the scientific and academic community, and representatives of relevant national and international bodies.

We invite you ALL with a lot of positive organizational spirit to register your participation at the 8th Croatian Congress on Occupational Health, to make a positive step towards the FUTURE with our joint efforts.

Welcome to Split, let's work and enjoy TOGETHER!

President of the Organizing Committee
Almenka Balenović, dr.med.