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. 

The Environmental Physiotherapy Roundtable: A live-streaming event

On Tuesday 26 November 2019 a group of members of the Environmental Physiotherapy Association (EPA) will be coming together in an online roundtable to talk about what environmental physiotherapy is, could, and should be going forward. The event will be live-streamed...

They are not “natural” disasters, but disasters of vulnerability

Shaun and Mathieu are physiotherapists with experience in disaster response. They were accepted to present a workshop at the Canadian Physiotherapy Association’s “Congress 2020” on the use of the disaster cycle to conceptualize the roles of physiotherapists in the...

The Role of Physiotherapists in Wilderness Medicine

As the profession of physical therapy advances, clinicians are looking for creative ways to apply their skill sets. In recent years, wilderness medicine has been growing in popularity within the physical therapy realm. Wilderness medicine is characterized by remote...

The environment as a tool for patient-centred care: a bridge between physiotherapy and Dance Movement Therapy

For the past few years, body and movement have been the prime focus of my professional and personal life. As a physiotherapist and Dance Movement Therapy practitioner this is not surprising and what my practice has made me realise is that movement is the essence of...

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