As global populations continue to grow at rapid rates, governments across the globe are exhausting efforts to find appropriate health services alongside exploring opportunities to limit our impact on the natural environment. Health services are stretched beyond working limits, particularly in the Global North where many nations are facing ageing populations and similar obstacles. One suggested method to tackle these issues surrounds the implementation of radical Green Infrastructure (GI), using community gardens and care farms, particularly within deprived communities. This important development of GI establishes public connection to areas of environment. Greater facilitation of this can be provided through social prescriptions, where medical professionals advise holistic approaches for a variety of social, psychological and physical issues. Within the field, reports of accessibility to green spaces improves both mental and physical health, therefore implementation within the United Kingdom (UK) could provide lasting benefits for the National Health Service (NHS) and to general public health. Research in this field is relatively novel and tends to be based in Scandinavian countries or the United States – therefore informing the basis of this literature review whilst giving potential for further data collection. Our work sets out to use mixed-methodology cross-sectionally, adopting sciences across the breath of environmental and health spheres, therefore allowing comparison and disparities to be drawn from a quantitative and qualitative database. Ultimately, the research shows that care farms and community gardens can impact significantly across deprived areas, with more work needed to understand their longer-term impacts on communities. Therefore, our work is committed to understand how environmental stimuli effects human physiology across the life course.
Future Physiology 2019 (Liverpool, UK) (2019) Proc Physiol Soc 45, PC04
Poster Communications: NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS TO IMPROVE HEALTH AND WELLBEING
L. M. Mitchell1, L. Houston2, M. Hardman1, M. Howarth2, P. Cook2
1. The School of Science, Engineering and Environment, The University of Salford, Salford, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom. 2. School of Health and Society, The University of Salford, Salford, Greater Manchester, United Kingdom.
View other abstracts by:
Where applicable, experiments conform with Society ethical requirements.