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 am I supposed to do about planetary health as a physiotherapist – Reflections on planetary health, sustainability and the boundaries of physiotherapy

When I first became interested in planetary health and environmental physiotherapy, I found myself asking the same question that I now hear from many colleagues: “Interesting. But what does that have to do with physiotherapy?” If I am honest, I was not being...

Let’s get out of the burning house! (…by changing our view of the patient)

Is changing our perspective of patients the place to start? At the first-ever Environmental Physiotherapy Festival 2023, I led a session on redefining the concept of the patient in physiotherapy, summarising key points from my October blog on Moving Earth (Gevers,...

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...

Launching the Environmental Physiotherapy Agenda 2023

Over the last 3 months, the EPA exec and a group of EPA members have steadily been working on our biggest project yet and we are beyond excited to finally launch it today:  The Environmental Physiotherapy Agenda 2023 The Environmental Physiotherapy Agenda 2023 (EPT...

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

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