Green spaces designed to provide health benefits of nature also offer many co-benefits: they provide wildlife habitat, store stormwater, or offer shade, for example. Nature contact offers promise both as prevention and as treatment” at all stages of life.įurthermore, exposure to nature is likely cheaper than “conventional medical interventions,” safe, practical, and doesn’t require a highly-trained professional to dispense treatments.

Together, they crafted a creative, ambitious research agenda, which was just published in Environmental Health Perspectives.Īccording to Frumkin and the other co-authors, “nature contact offers considerable promise in addressing a range of health challenges, including many - such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, depression, and anxiety - that are public health priorities. Forest Service, Willamette Partnership, Stanford University’s Center for Conservation Biology, and the Natural Capital Project. Howard Frumkin assembled a multi-disciplinary team at the University of Washington comprised of experts in epidemiology, environmental health, clinical medicine, psychology, ecology, landscape architecture, urban studies, and other disciplines, along with experts from the Nature Conservancy, Seattle Children’s Research Institute, U.S. To get a better handle on the remaining unknowns, leading public health expert Dr. We know that connecting with nature is good for us, but there are still many questions that need to be answered through more credible scientific research: What is the ideal “dose” of nature? What health conditions do these doses actually help with? Does duration and frequency of dose matter? How long do the benefits last? Does who you are and where you live impact how beneficial exposure to nature will be? And how does technology help or interfere with our connection to nature? Klyde Warren Park, Dallas, OJB Landscape Architecture / Gary Zonkovic Photography ASLA 2017 Professional General Design Award of Excellence.

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