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. 

Gesundheit braucht Klimaschutz – drei Tage auf Messe und Kongress therapie Leipzig

„Irritieren und Inspirieren“ war gemeinsam mit dem Health For Future (H4F) - Slogan „Gesundheit braucht Klimaschutz“ unser Motto. Unser Ziel war, Menschen durch Bewusstseinsschaffung für die Auswirkungen der Klimakrise auf unsere Gesundheit zu sensibilisieren und...

¿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...

Environmental physiotherapy at the bottom of the Arctic Sea

A little over one year ago, one of our first-year physiotherapy students at UiT The Arctic University of Norway wrote a fictional account of a future in which multidisciplinary teams of natural scientists, physiotherapists and many others were tasked to sail to the...

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...

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