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. 

Coming soon: The Environmental Physiotherapy Community Roundtable 2021

It is that time of the year again. Time for the next environmental physiotherapy roundtable, but with a twist. In its third iteration, we are pleased to invite you to the first-ever multilingual Environmental Physiotherapy Community Roundtable! Having grown to over...

Beyond Independence lies Interdependence

I sit cleverly positioned between the driver, an experienced field guide seated at the wheel on the right and an invisible cameraman operating from the left back corner of the safari vehicle. The guide turns frequently, looking over his or her left shoulder to talk to...

EPA joins the Physiotherapy and Refugees Education Project (PREP)

Today we are excited to announce that the EPA has joined the Physiotherapy and Refugees Education Project (PREP) as associate partner. PREP is an Erasmus+ project led by the Western University of Applied Sciences in Bergen, Norway. It seeks to address the mismatch...

Gesundheitswandern – zurück in eine andere Physiotherapie

Um meine Doktorarbeit zu finanzieren, beschloss ich, wieder in meinem gelernten Beruf als Physiotherapeutin zu arbeiten. Ich freute mich darauf, wieder intensiver und direkt in Kontakt mit Menschen zu kommen. Jedoch spürte ich auch schnell und sehr deutlich, worauf...

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