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. 

The inexorable March: Climate Change, Disability, and a Growing Urgency

There used to be a runway made of ice. Every winter, when the wild Bering Sea solidified between the tiny village of Little Diomede and the military outpost at nearby Big Diomede, the United States and Russia was temporarily connected by a thick, two-mile stretch....

A new way to think about physiotherapy

As a physio, I’ve always been drawn to lung disease, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say I’m drawn to people who are suffering with lung diseases.  But then that’s not exactly right either, because I’m really fascinated by how the lungs work (did you know that...

The 2nd Environmental Physiotherapy Roundtable – coming soon!

Nearly exactly one year after the first ever Environmental Physiotherapy Roundtable, we are pleased to invite you to the second iteration of  our livestream discussion on environmental physiotherapy. At the 2nd Environmental Physiotherapy Roundtable, representatives...

Én helse, bærekraft og fysioterapi med hest

I en nylig publisert podcast diskuterer Professor Tobba Sudmann folkehelse og bærekraft. Sudmann er fysioterapeut, så bærekraft og fysioterapi bli tatt opp med jevne mellomrom.  Hun er opptatt av sammenhengen mellom hvordan vi lever, hva vi gjør og hvordan vi tenker...

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