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. 

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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. 

An integrative review of the evidence for Forest Bathing in the management of depression and its potential clinical application in evidence-based osteopathy

People working in healthcare, regardless of their training or profession, are often motivated in part by a fascination with complexity. This may be expressed through ‘holism’ whereby one paradigm or model claims to have a unique value in understanding the myriad...

Let’s get out of the burning house! (…by changing our view of the patient)

Is changing our perspective of patients the place to start? At the first-ever Environmental Physiotherapy Festival 2023, I led a session on redefining the concept of the patient in physiotherapy, summarising key points from my October blog on Moving Earth (Gevers,...

Sommerhitze: Eine Gefahr für Ihre Patient*innen? Physiotherapeut*innen für Gesprächsrunde gesucht

Gemeinsam mit meinem Forschungsteam forsche ich zu Gesundheitsschutz bei Hitzeextremen in Deutschland (Projekt HAP-DE - Analyse von Hitzeaktionsplänen und gesundheitlichen Anpassungsmaßnahmen an Hitzeextreme in Deutschland, gefördert vom Umweltbundesamt). Fallstudie...

From the body as physical therapy to environmental physiotherapy

Fitting the time of reflection that is this time of the year, over the last few weeks I've been reflecting a lot on what it is that actually brought me to thinking about environmental physiotherapy. In many ways, these reflections were actually inspired by the...

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