Speakers
Meet all twelve speakers of this year's symposium
Raymond Ostelo
Plenary session 09:15
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"Evidence-based clinical guidelines of lower back pain, staying active"
Raymond Ostelo is professor of Evidence Based Physiotherapy. He is one of the program directors of the Amsterdam Movement Sciences (AMS) Research Institute and he is leading the musculoskeletal research section of the department of Health Sciences (VU University). As a clinical epidemiologist and physiotherapist his research focusses on low back pain, musculoskeletal conditions, epidemiology and measurement. He has published in high profile journals (e.g. JAMA, BMJ, PAIN, Clinical Journal of Epidemiology and the Cochrane Library). He has also been involved in the development of multiple mono and multidisciplinary evidence-based clinical guidelines.
One general recommendation of all these guidelines is: Stay Active!
Maureen Ros
Parallel session 10:00
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"Hoe laten we mensen meer bewegen?"
Interactieve workshop
Maureen Ros works as a human movement scientist at the Dutch Knowledge Center for Sport and Physical Activity. She focuses on applying knowledge from policy, literature, and practice to encourage people to get more active. The aim of her work is to identify how physical activity and exercise can play a role in the healthcare sector. This is done by creating awareness about the amount of physical activity necessary for optimal health, developing practical tools that can support the conversation about physical activity, and focusing on optimal collaboration between professionals in healthcare and sports.
Annerieke van Groenestijn
Parallel session 10:00
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"Aerobic exercise therapy for ALS-patients"
Annerieke van Groenestijn is a SUMMA alumna of the first 2003 SUMMA student cohort. She works as a rehabilitation physician at the outpatient rehabilitation medicine clinic of the Amsterdam UMC, location AMC. She mainly supervises patients with progressive neuromuscular diseases. In 2017, she defended her PhD thesis, which focused on the effect of aerobic exercise and cognitive behavioural therapy in patients with ALS. She currently focuses on exercise in slowly progressive neuromuscular diseases. To stay fit herself, she maintains her aerobic fitness by cycling and improves her strength through eGym workouts.
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Rob Wüst
Parallel session 10:00
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"The impact of bed rest on human skeletal muscle metabolism"
Rob Wüst is assistant professor at the Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences at VU (Free Universty of) Amsterdam. His research group studies the metabolism of the heart and skeletal muscle. He is particularly interested in the changes after bed rest, in acute and chronic inflammation, and in patients with long covid. The bed rest studies are being carried out in collaboration with astronauts from ESA and NASA. To better understand how muscle metabolism changes under different conditions, human muscle biopsies, mouse models, fluorescence and electron microscopy and a variety of cellular and molecular techniques are used.
Erik Scherder
Plenary session 11:00
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"The physical inactivity pandemic - the effects of physical (in)activity on cognitive functioning, mood, and the immune system"
Erik Scherder is professor in Clinical Neuropsychology (VU Amsterdam) and in Human Movement Sciences (RUG, Groningen). The talk will combine both disciplines. Next to COVID-19, there was already a pandemic, since 2012, called ‘Physical Inactivity’. Both pandemics are closely related as they have a negative effect on the quality of the endothelium of the blood vessels. The Physical Activity pandemic is still among us. Therefore, the effects of physical (in)activity on cognitive functioning, mood, and the immune system will be addressed in this presentation.
Thijs Eijsvogels
Plenary session 13:10
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"The extreme exercise hypothesis"
Thijs Eijsvogels is an Associate Professor of Exercise Physiology. His research training started at Radboud University (PhD degree), followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Hartford Hospital (USA) and Liverpool John Moores University (UK). Dr. Eijsvogels is interested in the physiological and cardiovascular responses to acute and chronic exercise training. His research is focused on the benefits and potential deleterious effects of exercise across the whole physical activity spectrum: from cardiovascular disease patients demonstrating excessive sedentary behavior to veteran athletes performing long-term, high-volume, high-intensity exercise training. He currently leads the Exercise Physiology research group at the Radboud University Medical Center.
Mirjam Stuij
Parallel session 13:55
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“Social standards and inequalities in exercise”
​Mirjam Stuij is senior researcher at the Mulier Institute. Her expertise is on social inequalities and complexities in participation in sports and physical activity.
Her PhD thesis was awarded the Boymans Prize 2021. This study was on physical activity as a topic of health care for people with diabetes. Its starting point was her curiosity about what it means to repeatedly get or deliver the message that it is good to be more active. She used narrative and ethnographic methodologies to study experiences of people with diabetes and healthcare professionals, and openings for a further improvement of care. She also critically reflected on the broader socio-political, research and healthcare context can be more accommodating.
Boy Sanders
Parallel session 13:55
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“Health Gains or Performance Enhancement: individulalising the Exercise Plan”
After twelve years of being a competitive cyclist myself, I decided to take up the sport from the sidelines and that as a Performance Coach/Trainer. In the meantime, I studied Sports and Movement Education in Eindhoven and did a Post-HBO study in Lifestyle Coaching in Amsterdam. I first combined the coaching of athletes with work in health care in the field of lifestyle and coaching in bariatric surgery patients. Here, I spent a lot of time on behavioral change and made most of my flying hours in coaching and interviewing. I have now been active as a coach for 6 years and have been able to focus full-time on developing high level athletes for over 1.5 years as Head of Performance & Talent Development / Teamleader Grow at Watersley Sports and Talentpark.
Baukje van den Heuvel
Parallel session 14:55
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"The era of man-made and degenerative diseases"
Baukje van den Heuvel finished her surgical training in 2014 and started her career as an oncological and abdominal surgeon. While treating patients suffering from diseases in the gastorintestinal tract, the relation with lifestyle become more and more apparent. Baukje started to realize that the lack of knowledge on health in her medical training, and its impact on the treatment and progression of disease, also symbolizes the lack of meaning of health in our healthcare system. The system focusses on disease. Baukje started to become more and more convinced that improving health during the treatment of disease is incredibly important and has become an advocate of doing so. Our system needs to change. She leads a project called Fit4Surgery in Radboudumc and is chairman of the Fit4Surgery foundation.
Martin Stevens
Parallel session 14:55
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"Exercise=Medicine in an orthopedic context"
Dr. Martin Stevens is an associate professor at the department of orthopaedics of University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG). His research focuses on “Orthopaedic procedures and determinants of movement behaviour”. His PhD focussed on the development of the Groningen Active Living Model (GALM). A strategy to stimulate older adults to become physical active. Within orthopaedics he focusses on physical functioning and physical activity behaviour in orthopaedic patients. Among others he is author of “Een nieuwe heup of knie: Hoe wordt u weer lichamelijk en sportief actief (ISBN: 978-90-368-2464-4). Currently he is involved in the introduction of lifestyle medicine in UMCG.
Marjolein Snaterse
Parallel session 14:55
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“Exercise on prescription?"
​Marjolein Snaterse is a postdoctoral researcher at the Cardiology Center of Amsterdam UMC. Her primary research focuses on sports and prevention. For her PhD research (2018) she investigated the effect of lifestyle as secondary prevention for coronary heart disease with. Now, she is expanding this to other target groups within cardiology, such as patients with congenital heart defects and a prehabilitation intervention for cardiac surgery patients.
Anne May
Plenary session 15:40
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"Physical activity, exercise and cancer"
Anne May is a clinical epidemiologist and a human movement scientist. She obtained her MSc in Human Movement Sciences (with distinction) at the Free University in Amsterdam in 2001, and her MSc in Epidemiology at the Erasmus MC Rotterdam in 2006. Currently, she is appointed as a professor of clinical epidemiology of cancer survivorship and is the Manager Research at the Julius Center. Starting during her PhD research and ever thereafter, she is investigating the effects of lifestyle on treatment-related side effects and prognosis as well as in the underlying mechanisms, with a special emphasis on physical activity and exercise. Furthermore, she is committed to implementing the positive results regarding lifestyle in clinical practice so that as many patients as possible can benefit.