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. 

Addressing the policy blind spots: Age-inclusive and age-equitable outdoor spaces in the Nordic Arctic region

In the last decade, the Nordic countries have adopted policy strategies in response to population ageing. However, a recent study highlights a critical blind spot in these policies, concerning the older adults living in the arctic regions of Finland, Norway, Sweden,...

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...

More ways than one

There is every reason to be seriously concerned and even frightened about the future of life and health on the world today. Soil erosion and degradation, loss of biodiversity, global warming, pollution, deforestation, ocean acidification and all the other closely...

Advancing Environmental Physiotherapy at the Sustainability Congress in Coimbra Polytechnic Institute

At the recent 7ª Conferência Campus Sustentável (CCS2025), a Sustainability Congress held in Coimbra, Portugal, I was pleased to share two initiatives reflecting EPA's mission: integrating environmental and planetary health across physiotherapy education and practice....

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

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