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. 

Taking the first steps: Environmental Strategies for a Continuing Educational Institute

The McKenzie Institute International provides a postgraduate series of courses to musculoskeletal physiotherapists, chiropractors, and other health care practitioners around the globe. The Institute has Branches in 29 countries and has close to 100 faculty worldwide...

Environmental physiotherapy education at the In Beta Unconference 2020

In Beta is a virtual community of physiotherapy educators who experiment with different approaches to teaching and learning, make podcasts, publish a newsletter, share project ideas and arrange Unconferences. In Beta’s name reflects the fact that we are always in a...

From the body as physical therapy to environmental physiotherapy

Fitting the time of reflection that is this time of the year, over the last few weeks I've been reflecting a lot on what it is that actually brought me to thinking about environmental physiotherapy. In many ways, these reflections were actually inspired by the...

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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