In the most exciting news for the rapidly growing world of environmental physiotherapy, World Physiotherapy, the sole international voice for physiotherapy representing more than 685,000 physiotherapists through 125 member organisations from around the world, has released its first-ever draft policy statement on climate change and health earlier this week.  

You can download and read the draft policy statement from the World Physiotherapy website here (at least for now, in English, but I’m sure translations will follow soon). This draft statement is pending approval at the general meeting in 2023, likely around the World PT Congress that will be taking place at the beginning of June 2023. So the truly exciting thing about it is that you can still give your feedback before that time and World Physiotherapy invites you to do so by sending your email directly to info@world.physio.

Several members of the EPA have already had the opportunity to provide feedback during the process of its creation, but it is likely we will do so again and we hope you will too. If you do, we would love it if you could indicate this to us using the comment section below this blogpost, maybe especially in the hope that your participation will inspire others also to voice their opinion, give their feedback, and help shape our professions’ involvement in this critical health issue. We, the EPA exec, will surely continue to provide feedback and support this process.

To be clear, this draft policy statement is both a huge step and a small step. There is more that needs to be done, to improve the policy statement, and even more so to implement that which it stands for. But this is also an incredible next step for us to build on further and continue our work.

Whatever you might have to add in your feedback or beyond it, there is one thing that is absolutely certain with the publication of this draft policy statement, and this is the very foundation on which the Environmental Physiotherapy Association and the entire idea of environmental physiotherapy are built on: It is that physiotherapy, the health of our clients, and the environment can neither be thought nor practised in distinction from one another.

To make sure we do this well, we encourage you to read, download and provide your feedback on the World Physiotherapy draft policy statement: climate change and health now!

Let’s go #EnviroPT 🌍🌎🌏🚑

Filip Maric (PhD)

Filip Maric (PhD)

A/Prof, EPA Founder & Executive Chair

Filip Maric is Associate professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and founder of the Environmental Physiotherapy Association. He is interested in the outer rims of healthcare and critical physiotherapy, philosophy, #EnviroPT, environmental post/humanities, planetary health and sea kayaking.