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. 

Advancing Environmental Physiotherapy at the Sustainability Congress in Coimbra Polytechnic Institute

At the recent 7ª Conferência Campus Sustentável (CCS2025), a Sustainability Congress held in Coimbra, Portugal, I was pleased to share two initiatives reflecting EPA's mission: integrating environmental and planetary health across physiotherapy education and practice....

Sinai University Holds Its First Environmental Physiotherapy Session

This October, Sinai University officially joined the Environmental Physiotherapy Agenda, becoming the first university in Egypt to do so. With the prompt support of the Dean of the Faculty of Physical Therapy, Prof. Awny Rahmy, a session was organized for physical...

The X-files: Animals in physiotherapy

The relationship between animals and physiotherapy is not a widely explored arena, though one that should get significantly more attention in light of today's environmental crises. Truth is, I am completely out of my depth here, but I am nonetheless going to jump in...

La lutte aux changements climatiques ne se planifie pas dans une seule langue : implications pour la physiothérapie environnementale

Puede descargar una versión en español de este blogpost aquí: Cleaver, S., Hudon, A. & St-Georges, M. (2021). La lucha contra el cambio climático no se planifica en un solo idioma: implicaciones para la fisioterapia ambiental (Traducido de francés por Charles,...

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

2 + 14 =