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. 

Reflections on the first Environmental Physiotherapy Roundtable

On 26 of November 2019, a group of members of the Environmental Physiotherapy Association (EPA) came together in a live-streamed online roundtable to talk about what environmental physiotherapy is, could and should be. This group had come together as our profession...

When knowledge begins to move: Teaching planetary health advocacy in physiotherapy education

In my role as a lecturer in the physiotherapy programme at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, I have spent some years working at the intersection of planetary health, environmental physiotherapy, and sustainable healthcare. As the teacher responsible for these topics...

From Soil to Soul – Nature-based learning at Qatar University

In the spring 2025 semester, Qatar University (QU) Department of Rehabilitation Sciences (DRS) Physiotherapy students (class of 2026) engaged in a series of nature-based mindfulness activities, which we designed and delivered in order to deepen our connection with...

Sinai University Holds Its First Environmental Physiotherapy Session

This October, Sinai University officially joined the Environmental Physiotherapy Agenda, becoming the first university in Egypt to do so. With the prompt support of the Dean of the Faculty of Physical Therapy, Prof. Awny Rahmy, a session was organized for physical...

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

15 + 6 =