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. 

Erasure and forgetting: re-engaging the human in environmental well-being

As physiotherapists, we recognize that one of our primary concerns lies in the support of well-being, a concept that is typically viewed through an anthropocentric lens. As underscored by Ton Gevers in his EPA blog post on Actor-network theory, anthropocentrism places...

¿Qué es el antropoceno?

¿Qué es el Antropoceno? Descubre 5 datos que debes conocer sobre este nuevo concepto. Dicho de forma más sencilla, la salud planetaria se asienta en tres características:1 Paul Crutzen, geoquímico holandés y Eugene Stoermer, biólogo americano proponen en el año 2000...

What are allied health professionals’ experiences of using nature-based approaches in Australia?

Ever wonder how other allied health professionals are integrating nature-based approaches into their practice? We conducted a survey of allied health professionals in Australia who were interested in nature-based approaches to find out what they were doing, what...

COVID-19 and physiotherapy through the lens of climate change adaptation and mitigation

After writing my recent blogpost on COVID-19, healthcare and the environment I've continued updating it for a pretty substantial reading, viewing and listening list. Together, I believe that these resources paint a pretty broad picture of what we are going through at...

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

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