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. 

What If They Fixed It? Part 2: Seeds of Tomorrow

A fictional, but not impossible, story based on a future that could be if current science and research-backed solutions to climate change were implemented by those in power. August 2030. The looming threat of a 26 billion euro fine snapped the Irish Government into...

How physiotherapy can take a central role in primary healthcare and climate change

Studying physiotherapy sparked my passion for what we call the ‘health care system’, and more specifically primary healthcare. I decided to follow up on this passion and pursue an advanced Master degree in Global Health, where I had the opportunity to dive deeper in...

The EU Common Training Framework and (the lack of) Planetary Health – A Call to Action

Physiotherapy education varies across Europe. Some variation is driven by differences in the professional remit of physiotherapists between jurisdictions, and some by the specific needs of health systems and populations, but one thing we all share is the need to...

Online environmental physiotherapy workshops at the 9th International week HAN University Nijmegen

This years HAN University of Applied Sciences 9th International Week - Connecting localism to globalism: Critical perspectives on allied health professions - will feature a host of interesting workshops, lectures and seminars. Two of these are highly relevant to...

If you have any thoughts, ideas or questions about environmental physiotherapy,
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