Advancing an environmentally responsible physiotherapy

 

The world faces complex and interrelated crises… Climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, rapid urbanization, geopolitical conflict and militarization, demographic change, population displacement, poverty, and widespread inequity create risks of future crises even more severe than those experienced today. Responses require investments that integrate planetary, societal, community and individual health and well-being (WHO 2021 Geneva Charter for Wellbeing)

 

 The impact of human activities on our planet’s natural systems has been intensifying rapidly in the past several decades, leading to disruption and transformation of most natural systems. These disruptions in the atmosphere, oceans, and across the terrestrial land surface are not only driving species to extinction, they pose serious threats to human health and wellbeing. Characterising and addressing these threats requires a paradigm shift (Myers, 2017)

Action at the level of direct drivers of nature decline, although necessary, is not sufficient … a sustainable global future’ is ‘only possible with urgent transformative change that tackles the root causes: the interconnected economic, socio-cultural, demographic, political, institutional, and technological indirect drivers behind the direct drivers (Diaz et al., 2019)

About

An international community of academics, clinicians, practitioners and students interested in exploring and advancing the field of environmental physiotherapy. 

Blog

Follow our latest musings on environmental physiotherapy. Ideas, inspiration, news, publications, events, and more. 

Join

Become part of the first international community of physiotherapists with an interest in researching, developing, and practising physiotherapy at a planetary scale. 

Resources

A growing selection of resources carefully selected by members of the EPA to inspire your thinking and practice of environmental physiotherapy. 

From Physiotherapy to Environmental Sciences: an ongoing path to interdisciplinarity

In August 2021, the world received terrible news from the IPCC: the 6th assessment report is their “starkest warning yet” regarding current global climate issues (1). That news is everyone’s business, whoever we are. As a physiotherapist, I have been preoccupied too,...

Nachhaltigkeit im Praxisalltag und der Physiotherapie im Allgemeinen – Präsentation auf der TheraPro 2020 in Stuttgart

New EPA member Hannah Krappmann is grabing the bull by its horns and will be presenting her thoughts on sustainability in physiotherapy at the TheraPro Fair and Congress in Stuttgart Germany between 07.-09.02.2020. Hannah also serves as a current board member in the...

COVID-19 and physiotherapy through the lens of climate change adaptation and mitigation

After writing my recent blogpost on COVID-19, healthcare and the environment I've continued updating it for a pretty substantial reading, viewing and listening list. Together, I believe that these resources paint a pretty broad picture of what we are going through at...

Environmental Physiotherapy at the WCPT Congress 2021

The Environmental Physiotherapy Association was formed only a week ago and we could not have asked for a better start. The quickly growing membership is clearly showing that there is a huge amount of interest and enthusiasm in the field of environmental physiotherapy...

If you have any thoughts, ideas or questions about environmental physiotherapy,
we would love to hear from you anytime

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