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. 

Et si promouvoir l’activité physique devenait un levier de santé durable ?

Face à l’urgence climatique et aux inégalités sociales croissantes, les professionnel·les de la santé et du social se retrouvent à un carrefour décisif : comment soigner les populations humaines tout en prenant soin de la planète, qui elle-même influence notre santé ?...

Blurring the Boundaries: Complex Adaptive Systems, Sense of Self, and Our Collective Evolution

At the first-ever Environmental Physiotherapy Festival 2023 I held a presentation beginning with a brief introduction on complex adaptive systems- a unifying area of study that encompasses information, evolution, neuroscience, and systems theories to shed light on an...

Women, Environment and Health from Personal to Global Perspectives

I grew up in the west of Ireland, where the land wasn’t something you visited, it was something you belonged to. As a child, I’d disappear for hours into fields and bogs, building shelters, shaping clay from the stream, following something instinctive in my hands. No...

Call for Papers – Special Theme in Environmental Conservation: Conservation and Restoration for Healthy Environments and People

The Ecological Health Network is excited to announce a call for papers for a Special Theme in the journal Environmental Conservation, focused on Conservation and Restoration for Healthy Environments and People. This Special Theme explores integrative thinking and...

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