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. 

Seeing as caring part three: Reconcile

Reconciliation in my art didn’t arrive as a grand revelation. It came as a slow, uncomfortable noticing that I was being pulled in opposite directions and still choosing to stand in the middle. On one side is my clinical life: evidence hierarchies, risk–benefit...

Pourquoi il est temps de s’engager collectivement pour une Kinésithérapie écologique?

À l’heure d’une prise de conscience populaire des modifications climatiques et de l’impact humain sur notre environnement, il est temps de proposer des actions concrètes pour réduire notre impact sur le climat. Pour rappel, selon l’IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on...

COVID-19 and physiotherapy through the lens of climate change adaptation and mitigation

After writing my recent blogpost on COVID-19, healthcare and the environment I've continued updating it for a pretty substantial reading, viewing and listening list. Together, I believe that these resources paint a pretty broad picture of what we are going through at...

Cuerpo, territorio y medio ambiente: hacia una kinesiología conectada con la salud mental e inmersa en naturaleza y los derechos humanos

Hay preguntas que no se responden en el aula ni en un congreso académico. Surgen, más bien, en el silencio del camino, en el dolor que persiste en el cuerpo de las personas y es compartido en los procesos terapéuticos, o en el temblor de una emoción al contemplar un...

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

11 + 2 =