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. 

Developing environmental physiotherapy in a community effort on Physiopedia

Thanks to the passion and ongoing efforts of our members, the Environmental Physiotherapy Association continues to advance environmental awareness and responsibility through a wide variety of ongoing projects. One such example is our Environmental Physiotherapy...

Can pre-operative physiotherapy reduce the carbon footprint of hospitals?

Healthcare systems have a significant carbon footprint generated through basic infrastructure, medical diagnostic and surgical procedures, as well as patients post-operative hospital stays. There is a growing body of research across various countries looking to...

Is Environmental Healthcare Feasible for the U.S. Healthcare System?

U.S. American healthcare is a huge business. The U.S. “spends the most of any nation by far on its health care system, nearly one-fifth of GDP, “which makes it a trillion-dollar business (1). Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal, author of An American Sickness, explains that...

The Posthuman Walking Project

The Posthuman Walking Project is a transdisciplinary collaboration of physiotherapy and visual arts academics and persons with experience of living with persistent pain.  The project explores the entanglement of human and non-human entities when walking with pain. As...

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