RehabMove2018: active lifestyle for people with physical disabilities; mobility, exercise & sports

To a certain extent, all people experience boundaries that limit the way we move through life. Figuratively, but also literally, like how we go about moving from one place to another, exercise to maintain health, or partake in sports. However, through injury or disease, ∼10% of the population faces additional challenges to move and exercise [1]. For instance, think of persons with lower-limb amputation, spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, cancer, heart disease, or, more recently, people coping with the consequences of Covid-19.

Despite the additional challenges imposed on people with a physical disability or chronic disease, the need to maintain an active lifestyle remains unchanged and may be even more important. Hence, support of these individuals should not only be aimed at their primary need of mobility but also at the need of being able to exercise and enjoy sports for a healthy lifestyle, to maintain and improve participation according to the International Classification of Functioning, Disability & Health [2]. This perspective nicely aligns with the overarching theme of Healthy Ageing, which is central to the organizing institution (University Medical Center Groningen), but also to the Northern Netherlands as a European reference site for Active and Healthy Ageing [3].

To achieve an active lifestyle for people with physical disabilities a multi-disciplinary framework is necessary, where diversity of prerequisites needs to be considered, to come to an inclusive environment providing everybody equal access to means of being active. To that end, the sixth RehabMove congress themed “Rehabilitation: Mobility, exercise & sports” aimed to bring together scientific knowledge and clinical experience on this shared challenge and strengthen the collaborative network that has been built through the years, as reviewed in the first contribution of this special issue, by Prof van der Woude, the chair of the first five congresses since 1991 [4].

The current special issue provides selected articles on the designated themes, which were subdivided over the consecutive three days; the rest of the extended abstracts can be found online [5]. Day 1 addressed the restoration of lost mobility. In this special issue current developments concerning innovative robotic mobility devices, i.e., exoskeletons [6], or innovative training methods to optimize motor learning of new tasks [7] are described. Day 2 covered the theme “exercise.” It was established that the knowledge and guidelines for the general population do not necessarily apply to specific groups of people with certain disabilities and consequently lack personalized advice. Excellent studies were presented on the development of new activity guidelines [8], and the implementation of activity monitors to improve physical activity [9]. Furthermore, the role of fatigue during activities of daily living was emphasized [10] and an alternative perspective from cardiac rehabilitation was given [11]. Finally, Day 3 focused on adapted sports. This day we shifted focus from general exercise for all, to Paralympic athletes performing at their maximum, expanding the limits of performance. These contributions start with a historical overview and the effectiveness of research during the Paralympic Games [12], followed by Paralympic cycling [13], Paralympic handcycling [14], and coming back full circle to suggestions for active living for disabled adults [15].

Novel to this sixth RehabMove conference was the parallel organization of the first Ability Battle Hackathon [16]. Students of Human Movement Sciences Groningen organized this four-day event. They brought together student teams from the universities of Amsterdam, Leuven, Münster, Maastricht, The Hague, and Groningen, together with industrial innovators and scientists. The teams worked on the challenging crossroads of healthcare, movement & rehabilitation sciences, and education. The students developed educational packages dedicated for (para-) medical academic students, through which the consequences of living with a disability become more apparent, helping new students to understand, experience, and qualify patients’ abilities and limitations during activities of daily living. To achieve this, the newly developed packages comprised physical simulators, devices for objective measurements, and relevant background knowledge. The new, innovative, educational programs, were presented at the congress and were judged on content, execution, and feasibility by the keynote speakers and the audience. With this successful event, the existing network has introduced a new cohort of young scientists and clinicians into the importance and challenges of mobility, exercise, and sports in people with physical disabilities. We expect that they will contribute to the growing body of knowledge and clinical implementation to be presented in the congress editions to come.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).