Reflections on the Global Physiotherapy Village

Overview

In his talk, Dr. Landry will argue that the global village of physiotherapists now finds itself at a crossroads: choose to adapt and thrive in an aggressively changing new world or choose to resist, entrench, and fervently protect the values and culture from our founding well over a century ago.

Audience

This presentation from the Canadian Physiotherapy Association Congress in April 2024 is for all physiotherapists and healthcare professionals.

Presenter: Dr. Michel Landry, PT, MBA, PhD - World Physiotherapy President

Mike has more than 30 years of experience as a physiotherapist. He is the founder of an EdTech startup company and is a professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Bergen, Norway) where he teaches in healthy aging and rehabilitation. His research focuses on global health, health policy, workforce and artificial intelligence. Before this, he was the chair of the Department of Physical Therapy and Associate Dean for Global Health at Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States and also spent a decade as Division Chief of the Doctor of Physical Therapy Division at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina in the United States.

He has been a rehabilitation leader in global humanitarian aid organisations for several decades. He began as a Project Manager with the International Centre for the Advancement of Community-Based Rehabilitation (ICACBR) at Queen's University, where he participated in implementing the War Victims Rehabilitation Project. He has collaborated and led humanitarian initiatives in settings including the Balkans, South Asia, and the Caribbean. Following the 2015 earthquake in Nepal, he worked as a policy consultant at the World Health Organization (WHO) field office in Kathmandu and the WHO headquarters in Geneva.

Mike has served as president of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association and as a mentor for World Physiotherapy's SUDA project in West Africa, a multi-year USAid-funded initiative to strengthen physiotherapy associations and education programmes in Mali, Niger, and Senegal.

He was elected as World Physiotherapy President in 2023.