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. 

Upcoming EPT Webinar: What Do You Stand For? A Journey Into the World of Environmental Physiotherapy

What Do You Stand For? A Journey Into the World of Environmental Physiotherapy We are living in complex and challenging times. As actors in health care systems we must be prepared to act and provide our services in light of multiple social-ecological crises. Starting...

They are not “natural” disasters, but disasters of vulnerability

Shaun and Mathieu are physiotherapists with experience in disaster response. They were accepted to present a workshop at the Canadian Physiotherapy Association’s “Congress 2020” on the use of the disaster cycle to conceptualize the roles of physiotherapists in the...

Free online courses and resources on climate and health

Starting to learn about today's environmental crises and their relation to human health can be quite overwhelming given the exponentially increasing number of resources that are becoming available. The good news is that it probably doesn't really matter where you...

Announcing the first-ever international Environmental Physiotherapy Festival 2023

Environmental physiotherapy has gone through an incredible evolution over the last four years. The EPA will soon have over 1000 members, planetary health, environmental and sustainability education is entering physiotherapy curricula everywhere around the world, new...

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

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