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. 

Reflections on the first Environmental Physiotherapy Roundtable

On 26 of November 2019, a group of members of the Environmental Physiotherapy Association (EPA) came together in a live-streamed online roundtable to talk about what environmental physiotherapy is, could and should be. This group had come together as our profession...

La lutte aux changements climatiques ne se planifie pas dans une seule langue : implications pour la physiothérapie environnementale

Puede descargar una versión en español de este blogpost aquí: Cleaver, S., Hudon, A. & St-Georges, M. (2021). La lucha contra el cambio climático no se planifica en un solo idioma: implicaciones para la fisioterapia ambiental (Traducido de francés por Charles,...

Participate in a survey on nature prescriptions in musculoskeletal rehabilitation

Participate in a survey on nature prescriptions in MSK rehabilitation In partnership with the Environmental Physiotherapy Association (EPA), research led by Dr. Aleksandra Zecevic and Nicole Struthers (MPT/PhD student) at Western University in Canada are conducting an...

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...

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