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. 

Blurring the Boundaries: Complex Adaptive Systems, Sense of Self, and Our Collective Evolution

At the first-ever Environmental Physiotherapy Festival 2023 I held a presentation beginning with a brief introduction on complex adaptive systems- a unifying area of study that encompasses information, evolution, neuroscience, and systems theories to shed light on an...

A voice for our education – Student’s perspectives on the EPT Agenda 2023

It’s 2020. The threat of climate change is ever increasing and we now have a greater understanding than ever of how the environment impacts our health. There is a global outcry for action to be taken to protect the future of the Earth. Leading the charge? Students....

Online environmental physiotherapy workshops at the 9th International week HAN University Nijmegen

This years HAN University of Applied Sciences 9th International Week - Connecting localism to globalism: Critical perspectives on allied health professions - will feature a host of interesting workshops, lectures and seminars. Two of these are highly relevant to...

Coming soon: The Environmental Physiotherapy Community Roundtable 2021

It is that time of the year again. Time for the next environmental physiotherapy roundtable, but with a twist. In its third iteration, we are pleased to invite you to the first-ever multilingual Environmental Physiotherapy Community Roundtable! Having grown to over...

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

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