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. 

Aktive Schulwege: Vorstellung zweier Workshops für Grundschulkinder und deren Eltern

Was können Physiotherapeut:innen beitragen um einen Beitrag zur Nachhaltigkeit zu Leisten? Diese Frage stellen sich viele in der Health for Future AG ErgoLogoPhysio. Eine der verschiedenen möglichen Antworten war, einen Weg zu finden, dass mehr Grundschulkinder ihren...

Cuerpo, territorio y medio ambiente: hacia una kinesiología conectada con la salud mental e inmersa en naturaleza y los derechos humanos

Hay preguntas que no se responden en el aula ni en un congreso académico. Surgen, más bien, en el silencio del camino, en el dolor que persiste en el cuerpo de las personas y es compartido en los procesos terapéuticos, o en el temblor de una emoción al contemplar un...

Green prescriptions are not necessarily what you think

The original green prescriptions Green prescriptions are prescriptions to spend time in green space, right? Not necessarily. A “green prescription” was a term first coined in New Zealand in the 1990s to describe a written prescriptions for physical activity made by a...

More ways than one

There is every reason to be seriously concerned and even frightened about the future of life and health on the world today. Soil erosion and degradation, loss of biodiversity, global warming, pollution, deforestation, ocean acidification and all the other closely...

If you have any thoughts, ideas or questions about environmental physiotherapy,
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