Nature and health

More research is needed on the population-level health benefits of contact with nature

This article presents a review of work done in recent decades to better understand the health benefits of contact with nature specifically as it applies to planning, design, and policy measures that target broad segments of urban populations. Through a “review of reviews” process, the authors identified and reviewed 59 articles or reports relevant to relationships between nature and human health and well-being. None of the reviews focused specifically on differences in relationships between nature and health by gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic position. Of the populations studied, children were the most commonly considered subgroup. A section of this review included an examination of the environments and/or pathways to health involving air quality, physical activity, social cohesion, and stress reduction. Of these, physical activity is the most studied area, while the environmental correlates of social cohesion are much less studied.

While the reviews generally agreed that beneficial effects from contact with nature do occur, most of the evidence relates to intermediate outcomes such as amount of physical activity, amount of social contacts, changes in physiological activity, changes in emotional states, and changes in cognitive capability rather than to disease states or measures of mortality. One interesting finding presented in this review relates to how being active in natural settings may yield health benefits over and above the benefits of physical activity in other environments.

Several concerns relating to the current status of research on the health benefits of nature were included in this review. One such concern focuses on methodology. The field remains dominated by observational study designs, and only a few studies have sufficient rigor to establish the causality of relationships between contact with nature and health. There is also a lack of research on how effects may vary by population subgroup, by type of natural environment, or by type of contact with nature. The authors did conclude, however, that taken together, the research reviewed does indicate that contact with nature can promote health and that the evidence for some benefits is quite strong. Their recommendations for further research include (1) population-level experimental studies, (2) studies on the economic significance of nature benefits for health, and (3) investigations into how different population subgroups have access to, use, and respond to nature.