Environmental sustainability and occupational therapy practice, revisited.

 Please go here formy first thoughts on sustainability in occupational therapy around ten years ago.I received an email from a colleague who has been an advocate and published author on this topic asking me if I had the opportunity to revisit my thoughts on sustainability and occupational therapy.In fact I have continued to think about this, so I thought I would document my response here.Hi XXXXX- Thanks for reaching out. I have previously and still believe that the study of climate change itself should remain within the purview of climate scientists. It seems to me that when it is co-opted by distal groups (including occupational therapy) that the issue tends to be used to promote a political social justice agenda. I continue to object to that because I don ' t know that occupational therapy can advance climate science itself and I find that the proposed actions advance very specific political ideologies and constricts the intellectual diversity within the profession. I disagree with the conflation of climate science with local political movements - such that in the AOTA policy it states that it is the role of occupational therapy practitioners " ...to increase individual, organizational, and community awareness and action related to sustainable occupational choices which threaten human, animal, and environmental well being, and the importance of making occupational choices that preserve natural and built environmental/ecological resources in the United States...
Source: ABC Therapeutics Occupational Therapy Weblog - Category: Occupational Health Source Type: blogs