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. 

World Physiotherapy policy statement on climate change and health: Time to give your feedback now!

In the most exciting news for the rapidly growing world of environmental physiotherapy, World Physiotherapy, the sole international voice for physiotherapy representing more than 685,000 physiotherapists through 125 member organisations from around the world, has...

The Posthuman Walking Project

The Posthuman Walking Project is a transdisciplinary collaboration of physiotherapy and visual arts academics and persons with experience of living with persistent pain.  The project explores the entanglement of human and non-human entities when walking with pain. As...

Les connaissances diverses sont nécessaires pour confronter les crises environnementales

Puede descargar una versión en español de este blogpost aquí: Cleaver, S., Hudon, A. & St-Georges, M. (2021). Se necesitan diversos conocimientos para enfrentar las crisis ambientales. (Traducido de francés por Charles, D.). Moving Earth: Environmental...

Is Environmental Healthcare Feasible for the U.S. Healthcare System?

U.S. American healthcare is a huge business. The U.S. “spends the most of any nation by far on its health care system, nearly one-fifth of GDP, “which makes it a trillion-dollar business (1). Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, author of An American Sickness, explains that...

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