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. 

A student project to increase active transport use at a university campus

In their final year of training, undergraduate physiotherapy students at the University of South Australia develop their skills and knowledge in health promotion through experiential learning.  The students apply concepts and theory of health promotion to a project...

What are allied health professionals’ experiences of using nature-based approaches in Australia?

Ever wonder how other allied health professionals are integrating nature-based approaches into their practice? We conducted a survey of allied health professionals in Australia who were interested in nature-based approaches to find out what they were doing, what...

Pourquoi il est temps de s’engager collectivement pour une Kinésithérapie écologique?

À l’heure d’une prise de conscience populaire des modifications climatiques et de l’impact humain sur notre environnement, il est temps de proposer des actions concrètes pour réduire notre impact sur le climat. Pour rappel, selon l’IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on...

Roots and Relations – Garden to Connect, Rwanda

What is the relation between growing plants, reused plastic pipes and physiotherapy? I have often been asked this, since I have engaged in urban gardening in Rwanda and Denmark. My personal path to connect the dots contains two meetings and an opportunity, which I...

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

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