4th International State-of-the-art-congress ‘Rehabilitation: Mobility, Exercise & Sports’

Rehabilitation medicine is a young medical discipline and field of multidisciplinary care, finding its roots in the USA in the very first years of the twentieth century, and receiving a strong boost during and after World War II [1]. In the Netherlands, rehabilitation medicine has been officially founded as a self-standing medical profession in 1955 [2]. Being a young multidisciplinary area of clinical practice and health care, rehabilitation medicine evolved from an initially clinically founded discipline towards a more academic-based discipline at the start of this millennium. Todate clinical rehabilitation care is often offered in specialised rehabilitation centres (24 in the Netherlands), in university hospitals and in many of the larger general hospitals. Rehabilitation medicine and care is internationally often based upon the conceptual framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF [3]), and on an integral, structured and multidisciplinary team approach. In the Netherlands, the rehabilitation medical doctor is trained (in a 4-year specialisation programme after medical training) largely towards the concepts and aims stated in the ‘White book on Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine in Europe’ [4], which has been published by the governing bodies of European specialists in physical and rehabilitation medicine. The rehabilitation medical specialist is a clinical specialist, yet part of the training programme is directed towards research, methodological content and skills [5,6]. Human Movement Sciences has been intimately linked to rehabilitation from its inception as an academic discipline, which was for the Netherlands in the early seventies in Amsterdam. Different from many other Western countries, in the Netherlands the professional training of paramedical and nursing staff is beyond the university teaching programme and part of a separate system of higher education that primarily offers professional bachelor and master programmes. This is where physio, occupational, vocational therapists, physical education and sports teachers are educated and trained, also for the rehabilitation practice. Human movement scientists follow a research-oriented university-based training programme, focussed on the study of human movement, both with a fundamental and an applied connotation. ‘Human movement sciences’ (HMS) is an interdisciplinary study, encompassing a wide range of disciplines such as (exercise) physiology, psychology, anatomy, biomechanics, and motor control and learning, etc. It is offered in many universities all over the world and has a wellestablished scientific journal by this name for 29 years (Human Movement Science, Elsevier) as well as many others addressing the field of human movement sciences. In the Netherlands, the study of human movement sciences is offered as a selfstanding scientific bachelor-master programme at two universities (Amsterdam and Groningen) and as a Master specialisation in two other universities (Nijmegen, Maastricht) today. Among the most important applied contexts are the fields of sports, health care and labour. Within the context of health, rehabilitation has been an important field of research and study among both staff and students from the beginning of HMS and has – in the Netherlands – let to active collaborations between rehabilitation professionals and human movement scientists, almost from the early years onwards. It has generated two professors in human movement sciences and rehabilitation, in Amsterdam and Groningen. As such HMS – together with the technical and social sciences – have almost by nature contributed to the continued metamorphosis of rehabilitation from a clinical field of (para-)medical care and practice, towards a much more evidence-based academic and clinical-research (multi-) disciplinary environment [7]. Today – and not only in the Netherlands – human movement scientists are in many cases the linking pin between their schools’ and research institutes’ programmes on the one hand and the rehabilitation centres/departments on the other. Disability and Rehabilitation, 2010; 32(26): 2149–2154