Following is a directory of selected publications that provide information about the connection between the use of parks and trails and individual healthcare.
Program Overviews – National Focus
The National Park Service’s Healthy Parks Healthy People US program was established in 2011, to reframe the role of parks and public lands as an emerging, powerful health prevention strategy. With this renewed focus on health, we hope to bring about lasting change in Americans’ lifestyle choices and their relationship with nature and the outdoors. https://www.nps.gov/public_health/hp/hphp.htm
Just What the Doctor Ordered: Using Parks to Improve Children’s Health is an article by Nate Seltenrich that provides an overview of several Healthy Park Healthy People programs. He identifies various park-prescription programs that are locally managed and operated. http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/123-a254/
Program Overviews – International
Healthy Parks Healthy People explores the links between nature and human health. HPHP Central is a place to access and share the latest international research, innovations and programs that focus on the health benefits of human contact with the natural world. http://www.hphpcentral.com/
Research Articles
Healthy Parks, Healthy People: The Health Benefits of Contact with Nature in a Park Context http://www.georgewright.org/262maller.pdf
Blog Posts
Unlocking the Gate | Helping our children engage with the natural world and local community
Healthy Parks, Healthy People: The Nature Prescription
How Walking in Nature Changes the Brain
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/how-nature-changes-the-brain/
Reports
Parks and Health: Aligning Incentives to Create Innovations in Chronic Disease Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/13_0407.htm
Hispanic Federation has released a report entitled Healthy Parks: Healthy Latinos, which outlines the health disparities impacting the nation’s 55 million Hispanics and the importance of green spaces to Latino communities from coast to coast.
http://www.hispanicfederation.org/images/pdf/healthylatinolo.pdf
Mardie Townsend, Claire Henderson-Wilson, Elyse Warner and Lauren Weiss, School of Health and Social Development, Deakin University, recently prepared Healthy Parks Healthy People: the State of the Evidence 2015 for Parks Victoria (Australia). The 103-page document reviews the post-2008 scientific literature in relation to the health benefits of parks and natural spaces. The attempt is to see what the links are between nature time and health/wellbeing as well as the connection to parks and similar outdoor environments. http://www.hphpcentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/HPHP_state-of-the-evidence_2015.pdf
Park Prescriptions Articles
Just What the Doctor Ordered: Using Parks to Improve Children’s Health
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/123-a254/
Park Prescriptions in Practice
http://www.parksandrecreation.org/2014/August/Park-Prescriptions-in-Practice/