The Field "Rehabilitation and Therapy" has been instated formally in April 1996. The co-ordination and administration of the Field is located at the Department of Epidemiology, Maastricht University, the Netherlands. The aim of the field is to bring together international experts from the therapy and rehabilitation professions. It was felt that within the CC it was necessary to form this Field in order to ensure proper representation in review groups from the therapy and rehabilitation professions as well as establishing a specific database for these professions. Moreover, it is important for the profile of the therapy and rehabilitation professions to be united in a field. In addition, the existence of the field and the resulting RCTs form an important link for other Fields and Review Groups.

As every field we have an internationally and multidisciplinary advisory board (rehabilitation medicine, physical therapy, manual therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy), including a consumer representative. The members of the advisory board determine the policy of our field, judge the activities and progress of the field, and think about how we can improve the organisation of the field and achieve our aims in the most efficient way. We also instated local contact persons, whose prime responsibility is to get in touch with people who are interested in the field, provide them with information and direct them to the Field base. In this presentation we will focus on the growth process of our field, with special emphasis on problems solved and strategic planning. Experiences from the starting years of our field are presented around the topics: contacts, database, networking, consumers, policy, money.