Jan Tessier, founding member of Axxon, the Belgian Association for Physiotherapy and founding member of the SIG (Special Itrest Group) ABCIG Physiotherapy with Older Persons (Axxon Belgian Clinical Interest Group) has been working with older people since 1976 in Long Term Care Facilities and in the Community.

As a member of the Executive Committee in Axxon, he took the lead in promoting the Physiotherapy working with Older People and to inform colleagues working in a geriatric field how to work with older people and to help them stay active and on the move.

He is an expert in fall prevention and works together with the Flemish expertise center for fall and fracture prevention on the development of guidelines for fall prevention in residential care centers and in primary care.

He organise courses for older people and for the professionals working in primary care and in homes, to help them coping with Fall prevention.

In 2009, Jan Tessier, as representative of the SIG of Belgium, in Ankara at the General Assembly, applied to become a member of IPTOP as a Belgian group with a special interest in working with the elderly. In 2011 (Amsterdam) at the general meeting, this application was approved by IPTOP. Jan then became MCR for Belgium. In 2015 he becomes Secretary of the Executive Committee of IPTOP until he passes the torch to Janet Thomas (UK) in 2019.

From 2019 until now he worked for IPTOP in het Communication team as administrator for the IPTOP website.

He says about his role as Patron: ‘This is something in which I feel good as a Physiotherapist, helping each other, giving advice, passing on my experiences from working actively with the elderly to my colleagues. I already did this in Belgium and I want to continue doing this on an international level.”