Use of Other Public Budgets
and 4,000 prescriptions have been written. 10 Collaborations with organizations such as Parks Canada, local conservatories, and botanical gardens have provided patients with free or discounted access to spaces that fulfill their green prescriptions. The PaRx website advises patients to “make easy green tweaks” to their routine such as booking a lunchtime walk in the park, doing cardio workouts on a trail, choosing an active commute to work or school along a greenway, and planning a weekend getaway around an outdoor experience. 11 Presence in nature has been shown to improve mental and physical health including depression, anxiety, stress, inflammation, blood pressure, diabetes, cancer care, cardiovascular health, respiratory health, ADHD, pregnancy, asthma, and obesity. 12 Given this growing evidence, there may be creative opportunities to channel funding from other relevant government departments toward the development, improvement, and/or maintenance of parkland. Drayson (2014) suggests that there is “a potential case for local authority public health budgets to directly support urban green space maintenance and improvement” (p. 37-38). This was introduced in Sunderland, England in 2014: as parks funding declined sharply, public health funds were directed to wider services including parks to explore how facilities such as picnic benches, outdoor gyms, or connected cycle routes would promote more use of existing green spaces
Health
Given the growing trend of green prescribing as a medical treatment, there may be emerging opportunities to direct public health budgets toward supporting greenspace development and improvements. Canadian physicians are permitted to issue “green prescriptions” to patients whose medical conditions might benefit from ecotherapy. 7 Nature therapy or “shinrin yoku” (forest bathing) and its benefits were first pioneered by the Japanese government in 1982 8 , and green prescriptions have been formally part of New Zealand’s health care system since the late 1990s 9 . Park Rx America was established in 2017 as a grassroots movement. In Canada, Park Prescriptions (PaRx) launched in 2019 as an initiative of the B.C. Parks Foundation; it has since expanded across all provinces. PaRx facilitates written prescriptions that advise patients to get outdoors for at least two hours a week (at least 20 minutes at a time). PaRx has been endorsed by the Canadian Medical Association and is scaling at a rapid pace according to the Ontario Public Health Association. Over 10,000 health care providers have registered across Canada
7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/ victoriaforster/2022/02/08/canadian-physicians-can- now-prescribe-nature-to-patients/?sh=2fe8a5bd6f20
10 https://reasonstobecheerful.world/green- prescriptions-health-nature-parks/
8 https://www.doseofnature.org.uk/around-the-world1
11 https://www.parkprescriptions.ca/en/ prescribers#Tips-for-creating-a-nature-habit
9 Pringle R: Green Prescriptions: effective health promotion?. J Phys Educ N Z. 1998, 31: 7-16.
12 https://www.parkprescriptions.ca/en/whynature Appendix D
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