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. 

A student project to increase active transport use at a university campus

In their final year of training, undergraduate physiotherapy students at the University of South Australia develop their skills and knowledge in health promotion through experiential learning.  The students apply concepts and theory of health promotion to a project...

Il ruolo chiave della pianificazione urbana nella promozione dell’attività fisica

L’inattività fisica, concorrendo ad arrecare numerosi effetti nocivi sulle patologie croniche, è responsabile di oltre 5 milioni di morti annuali. Per questa ragione è considerabile come una pandemia (1). Ciò, associato ad un’esponenziale crescita della popolazione,...

What actions can I take as a physiotherapist to reduce my professions ecological footprint the most efficiently?

If you are a clinic based, community based or outpatient-based physiotherapist then one of the most important actions you can make is to be an incredible physiotherapist! What I mean by this is that the better job you can do at rehabilitating someone from physical...

Environmental Physiotherapy at the WCPT Congress 2021

The Environmental Physiotherapy Association was formed only a week ago and we could not have asked for a better start. The quickly growing membership is clearly showing that there is a huge amount of interest and enthusiasm in the field of environmental physiotherapy...

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

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