Advisory Board Topic Suggestions

Submission Deadline: March 27, 2026


Topic Ideas

National Comp 2026 Advisory Board Topic Suggestions

Would You Like to Speak at National Comp 2026?

National Comp seeks presentations that offer practical solutions, thought-provoking conversations and real-world experience meeting the challenges we all face. Each year we ask the Advisory Committee to tell us what they would personally like to see on the 2026 conference program. The list below is culled from their impressive lists, in case you're looking for presentation inspiration.

This list below is far from exhaustive — any topic impacting workers' comp professionals and employer programs or the industry as a whole will be given equal consideration.

Don't forget, we're also looking for the latest studies and research, employer success case studies, promising pilot programs and more. And because everything we do is ultimately about and for the injured worker, we welcome the injured worker perspective onstage – an opportunity to both educate and inspire the workers' comp community.

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Care & Treatment

Emerging treatments and evidence-based medicine transforming injury care and recovery timelines

  • Misdiagnosis in Workers' Compensation: The Hidden Cost Driver - How diagnostic errors cascade through the system, increasing costs, delaying recovery, and driving litigation. Evidence-based approaches to improving accuracy from initial evaluation through treatment.
  • Clinical Complexity in 2026: Multi-Morbidity, Aging & Metabolic Dysfunction - How layered chronic conditions change injury susceptibility, slow healing, and extend disability. Practical strategies to adapt triage and care planning.
  • Metabolic Health & Tissue Repair: What Employers Must Understand About Delayed Recovery - How glycation, microvascular compromise, and immune dysfunction impact surgical outcomes, soft tissue healing, and return-to-work timing.
  • Mild TBI in Non-Catastrophic Claims: The Silent Driver of Long-Tail Claims - Deep dive into underdiagnosed mild traumatic brain injuries, vestibular dysfunction, and cognitive load deficits. Clinically sound approaches to detection, treatment, and RTW.
  • Innovation in MSK Recovery: Reducing Claims That Drive 90% of Total Cost - Cutting-edge, evidence-based approaches to musculoskeletal care: early mobilization protocols, virtual MSK models, nutrition-informed recovery, precision triage tools.
  • Long COVID as an Occupational Disease - Updated case law, medical management approaches, and return-to-work strategies for persistent symptoms in the post-pandemic workplace.
  • Peptide Therapy & Regenerative Medicine in Injury Recovery - Exploring cutting-edge regenerative treatments and their evidence base in workers' compensation applications.

Protect & Prevent

Smart prevention strategies, cutting-edge safety tech, and effective programs that keep workers safe

  • Advanced Return-to-Work Program Design: Why Most RTW Programs Fail - An unvarnished look at why programs underperform or collapse, with practical models using functional load matching, job-architecture redesign, and supervisor accountability.
  • Digital Twins in Injury Prevention - Creating 3D digital models of workplaces overlaying real-time sensor data to run simulations and identify injury risks before they happen. Test different configurations virtually before anyone lifts a real box.
  • Next-Generation Biomechanical Analytics Without Wearables - How computer vision, force-mapping, and equipment sensors provide continuous ergonomic data without wearable concerns. Validated models with proven impact.
  • Advanced Injury Prediction Models - Going beyond ergonomics or basic analytics to integrate task exposure profiles, force analysis, time-on-task patterns, and clinical indicators to predict injuries early.

Legal & Regulatory

Navigating the evolving legal and regulatory landscape

  • Supreme Court Post-Chevron Era: How National Legal Shifts Affect Workers' Comp - Implications of reduced agency deference and other landmark decisions reshaping the regulatory landscape.
  • Section 111 / MSA Mandate Year One: Lessons Learned - First full-year impact analysis of MSA reporting requirements. What has CMS done with the data? What are the downstream impacts?
  • Evidence-Based Causation: Medical Science vs. Legal Presumptions - How current laws overlook evidence-based causation, particularly with presumption law expansions impacting system costs and fairness.
  • Independent Medical Examinations: From Records to Report - Comprehensive IME process walkthrough addressing the $250M-$1B in annual national spending, jurisdictional variations, and best practices from records review to final report.

Health, Wellness & Support

Proactive strategies for mental and physical well-being that prevent claims and improve outcomes

  • The Psychology-Injury Nexus: Predicting High-Cost Claims - Using neuroscience-based understanding of catastrophizing, fear-avoidance, and cognitive distortions to identify and intervene in claims before they spiral.
  • Beyond the Claim File: How Social Determinants of Health Reshape Recovery - Food access, housing stability, transportation barriers, and caregiver burdens as hidden drivers of delayed recovery and high costs. How to ethically integrate SDOH screening into claims workflows.
  • Workplace Trauma & Vicarious Trauma - Supporting workers who witness violence or tragedy, and recognizing secondary trauma in claims professionals who absorb these stories daily.
  • Litigation as a Symptom: Addressing Root Causes Before Lawyers Get Involved - Understanding what drives attorney involvement and preventing it through better claim handling and communication.
  • Why Stakeholders Resist Light Duty - Understanding psychological, cultural, and operational barriers from unions, doctors, supervisors, and coworkers to accommodation programs—and how to overcome them.
  • Compassion Fatigue in Claims Professionals - Preventing burnout in those who help injured workers. Organizational strategies for building sustainable, resilient careers.

Risk & Cost Management

Understanding the numbers that matter and the strategies that reduce costs

  • Actuarial Processes & Collateral Requirements: The Topic No One Understands - How reserves and settlement philosophy impact collateral expenses for self-insureds and insurers alike. Essential knowledge that few practitioners understand.
  • The True Cost of Delay: Quantifying Financial Impact - Cost cascade analysis showing how delays in treatment, RTW, and resolution multiply expenses exponentially through the claim lifecycle.
  • Defense Attorney Cost Explosion: What's Driving It & How to Fix It - Nationwide trend analysis showing attorneys becoming the safety net for lack of adjuster quality and quantity. Not the best way to spend money.
  • Misplaced Incentives in Workers' Comp: The Real Systemic Barrier - Identifying perverse incentives throughout the system and addressing their unintended consequences. Every incentive creates ripple effects.
  • Beyond the Hype: Real ROI from AI Implementation - Moving past pilot programs to measurable outcomes and actual cost-benefit analysis with real data from working programs.

Real-World Solutions

Proven approaches from the front lines—what works, what doesn't, and why

  • The 90-Day Miracle: Early Actions That Determine Claim Outcomes - Why the first three months are critical and what specific actions in those first 90 days determine the entire trajectory of a claim.
  • The Claims Supervisor Transition: From Micro-Manager to Leader - How great adjusters learn to become great supervisors. Among the most significant problems in claims organizations, yet rarely acknowledged or taught.
  • How Injured Workers Will Use AI: The Industry Blind Spot - While the industry focuses on how WE will use AI, zero discussion exists about how injured workers are and will use AI. Should we help them with prompts to navigate the system?

Data & Technology

Cutting-edge technology and the data strategies driving better, faster, smarter outcomes

  • The WC System Will Fail Without a Data Dictionary - How can we expect AI to work without industry-wide data standardization? This problem is worse than most understand.
  • Digital Twins in Injury Prevention - Creating 3D digital models of workplaces overlaying real-time sensor data to run simulations and identify injury risks before they happen.
  • Next-Generation Biomechanical Analytics Without Wearables - How computer vision, force-mapping, and equipment sensors provide continuous ergonomic data without wearable concerns.

National Comp 2026 will take place September 29-30 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Learn more about the educational tracks and program formats, view this year's guidelines, and submit your ideas.

Submit a Proposal
National Comp is presented by Risk & Insurance®, which covers the people, stories and risks that embody the essential functions of risk management and commercial insurance. Now an affiliate of The Institutes, R&I is dedicated to bringing the workers' compensation community together to share challenges and opportunities, and the latest solutions and innovations. Our mission is to provide a platform for industry leaders and executives to collaborate and build the solutions that will drive the workers' compensation industry forward.