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. 

EPA joins the Physiotherapy and Refugees Education Project (PREP)

Today we are excited to announce that the EPA has joined the Physiotherapy and Refugees Education Project (PREP) as associate partner. PREP is an Erasmus+ project led by the Western University of Applied Sciences in Bergen, Norway. It seeks to address the mismatch...

¿Qué es el antropoceno?

¿Qué es el Antropoceno? Descubre 5 datos que debes conocer sobre este nuevo concepto. Dicho de forma más sencilla, la salud planetaria se asienta en tres características:1 Paul Crutzen, geoquímico holandés y Eugene Stoermer, biólogo americano proponen en el año 2000...

How physiotherapy can take a central role in primary healthcare and climate change

Studying physiotherapy sparked my passion for what we call the ‘health care system’, and more specifically primary healthcare. I decided to follow up on this passion and pursue an advanced Master degree in Global Health, where I had the opportunity to dive deeper in...

When knowledge begins to move: Teaching planetary health advocacy in physiotherapy education

In my role as a lecturer in the physiotherapy programme at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, I have spent some years working at the intersection of planetary health, environmental physiotherapy, and sustainable healthcare. As the teacher responsible for these topics...

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

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