Health practitioners and fitness buffs have long known that regular physical activity offers numerous health benefits, including the prevention of chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, some cancers and osteoporosis.
Benefits of green spaces
Despite all these benefits, more than three out of four adults in the United States get far less exercise than the recommended 150 to 300 minutes a week of moderate physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes a week of vigorous physical activity.
Studies have also found that outdoor places such as parks and trails are effective settings for physical activity.
Being in nature provides physical and mental health benefits similar to those of physical activity. The research is clear that natural settings could be an effective venue for promoting physical activity. People generally enjoy being outdoors, with parks, trails and community gardens being the most
popular venues.
Factors that make these venues more attractive to visitors include physical features such as community centers, playgrounds, lighting and clear signage, as well natural features such as tree canopy and bodies of water that are well maintained.
Who Exercises in Greenspaces
The use of parks and greenspaces for physical activity varies across demographic groups, with men more likely than women to use these spaces for physical activity. In addition, a study of parks in Los Angeles found that Black adults are less likely than white adults to engage in physical activity in parks, while English-speaking Latinos are equally likely and Asian/Pacific Islanders are more likely.
“Some groups — Black, Indigenous, and other people of color and immigrant and refugee populations,
for example — often have experienced historic or current discrimination that hinders their use of natural spaces, and they routinely have less access to high-quality parks,” Frumkin said. “In addition, children, the elderly and people with disabilities face challenges in accessing natural spaces. Ensuring that these spaces are safe and easy to navigate, with appropriate programming, could help increase
their use of parks and other natural settings.”
Getting Outdoors
With these complexities in mind, Maddock and Frumkin offer four options that health care professionals could implement to encourage the use of parks and other natural settings by their patients.
Back to nature
One is simply to “prescribe” nature contact to patients.
“Recommending that patients spend more time in these settings is known as nature prescriptions or ‘ParkRx,’ and while more research is needed, the studies to date suggest that this approach is effective,” Maddock said.
Health Professionals as Examples
Another is for health professionals to model this behavior by engaging in it themselves. This modeling has been found to be effective in promoting healthy behaviors while also enhancing the well-being of the health professionals.
Promoting Greenspaces
A third approach is for health professionals to engage in community efforts that promote the use of outdoor spaces, such as Houston’s Be Well Communities initiative, which is supported by the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Funding for green projects
Finally, health professionals could help create and maintain parks and greenspaces by steering funds into these efforts through Community Health Needs Assessments, Medicaid funds and funds from health care conversion foundations.
“It is clear that the use of parks and natural settings for physical activities could be a potentially powerful tool for promoting two important health behaviors simultaneously,” Maddock
said. “This could be especially important given that the majority of Americans do not get enough exercise or spend enough time outdoors.”
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