2nd National Congress Sport, Physical Activity and Health

On behalf of the organizing committee, it is our pleasure to welcome you to the second edition of the National Congress Sport, Physical Activity and Health on Friday 28 June 2024. The congress will be organized by Maastricht University in agreement with the Maastricht Movement Research Network and takes place at Vista College, Sportzone Limburg, Sittard.

Registration for this event is opened with this website going live.

The congress is organized in collaboration with the Watertoren (https://www.dewatertorensportenbewegen.nl), the national cooperation platform for all universities in the Netherlands that are active in the field of Sport, Physical Activity and Health. These include broad research universities, technical universities, university medical centers and universities of applied sciences. The aim of the congress is to strengthen the collaboration amongst those universities and therewith to bolster the multi-, inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge and innovation networks for sport, exercise and health in the Netherlands. 

The congress will entail keynote lectures, symposia, workshops, and poster sessions.

Keynote lectures will be delivered by: 

• Thijs Eijsvogels, Associate professor, Department of BioMedical Sciences, Radboudumc, Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The title of his lecture is: Physical activity and cardiovascular health: a delicate dose-response relationship.
   
• Femke van Nassau, Senior researcher, Department of Public and Occupational Health, Amsterdam UMC, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The title of her lecture is: Limited impact of sport, physical activity and health initiatives; matter of program or implementation failure?

The symposia are organized in three parallel sessions by the universities that are represented in the Watertoren consortium. They will cover a wide mix of topics that refer to the Roadmaps of the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). 

The parallel symposium topics are: 

1. Healthy Generation
Sport and exercise need to be developed from an early age onward as part of an active, healthy lifestyle to promote the vitality of Dutch society.

2. Exercise is Medicine
Sport and exercise form an important means of prevention in the aging population as well as an effective medicine for many patient groups and therefore must be promoted.

3. Moving Smarter and Better
Data and technology are important drivers for the promotion of sports and exercise across the lifespan, for physically active and inactive people, or with and without disease and require smart applications to be successful in this regard.

Participants can attend workshops for acquiring new skills for procuring funding for and doing scientific research with societal impact. 

Finally, the congress will provide ample room for poster presentations by students and PhD candidates. 

The congress language is English, the language of science and the one preferred by the many international researchers that are active in the domain of sport, exercise, and health. The language in the three parallel symposium sessions is Dutch, of which one session will always be in English.

Registration takes place via the registration form. The registration fee for the congress is €150, and includes coffee, tea, lunch, snacks, and beverages. For students and PhD candidates this registration fee is €50.

We hope to see you in Sittard!

Best regards,

Brenda Berendsen
Bart Bongers
Eric Wishaupt
Kenneth Meijer

Contact: ncsbg2024-vbw@maastrichtuniversity.nl