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 can physiotherapists learn from COVID-19 about the importance of accessing outdoor spaces?

For many of us, COVID-19 has meant restrictions on what we do and where we go. These restrictions may include lockdowns, which prevent us from leaving our homes, through to supervised quarantine, often in hotels. These restrictions have been criticised because of the...

Can greenspace exposure improve pain outcomes?

Have you ever told a patient to spend more time in greenspaces to help reduce their pain? I haven’t, but this simple intervention may improve pain outcomes for our patients. It was not something I had given a lot of thought to, until a discussion with colleagues last...

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...

New video and podcast on environmental physiotherapy education

My brain is still buzzing with thoughts and ideas after two back-to-back conferences that featured contributions on environmental physiotherapy education amongst many other exciting themes. Thanks to their online format, you need not worry if you haven't been able 'to...

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

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