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. 

Have we ever treated patients yet? Actor-network theory and the changing patient in a changing world

Have you ever wondered who or what the patient truly is? In medicine, the patient is defined as “a person who is ill or undergoing treatment for a disease.” (Dictionary, 2023) Yet, in my opinion, this definition paints a narrow, one-dimensional portrait of the patient...

The Healing Power of House Plants in Physiotherapy Clinics

In physiotherapy, where the focus is on the patient’s pain, and restoring optimal function, there is a tendency for a myopic view of rehabilitation. While the greatest attention should be given on providing a quality assessment and intervention, the environment where...

Contribute to a new global constitution for social wellbeing and environmental prosperity within an equitable world

The Global Constitution Project / 2024 - 2029 Distinguished Professor Joyeeta Gupta of the University of Amsterdam, and winner of the Spinoza Award 2023, is undertaking a research project to write a Global Constitution. The aim of this draft Constitution is to...

From Physiotherapy to Environmental Sciences: an ongoing path to interdisciplinarity

In August 2021, the world received terrible news from the IPCC: the 6th assessment report is their “starkest warning yet” regarding current global climate issues (1). That news is everyone’s business, whoever we are. As a physiotherapist, I have been preoccupied too,...

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

2 + 3 =