Summary / Key takeaways
Climate change disrupts occupational participation through extreme heat, floods, wildfires, poor air quality, infrastructure damage, food insecurity, infectious disease, and mental health impacts. These effects disproportionately burden vulnerable populations and exacerbate existing inequities. Occupational therapy services also contribute to healthcare emissions and waste through energy use, material consumption, disposable products, and resource-intensive interventions. As climate change threatens health system resilience and everyday functioning, occupational therapy has an important role in advancing sustainable, climate-resilient care.
Sustainable occupational therapy requires high-value, low-waste, and equity-informed care. Strategies include reducing low-value activities, expanding virtual care where appropriate, reusing durable medical equipment, minimizing waste, and incorporating sustainable occupational performance into practice. Occupational therapists can also strengthen resilience through health promotion, anticipatory guidance for climate events, and nature-informed approaches such as biophilic design and connecting people to nature.
Achieving sustainable occupational therapy requires education, advocacy, quality improvement, leadership, and collaborative partnerships. Embedding sustainability into governance, service design, and quality frameworks, while engaging service users and interdisciplinary partners, is essential to building resilient, equitable, and low-carbon occupational therapy services.
Playbook: Sustainable Occupational Therapy
Suggested Citation:
Craik J, Nour S, Devitt K, Miller FA. Sustainable Occupational Therapy . Version 1.0. [Internet]. CASCADES; 2024 [cited DATE]. Available from: https://cascadescanada.ca/.
