The Health Impacts of Green Environments
Many developed economies, including New Zealand , are struggling with growing health inequalities and anticipating a growth in the burden of lifestyle-related diseases such as diabetes. Whilst the unequal distributions of structural and behavioural risk factors producing these problems are well understood, there has been less success in tackling them. Attention has recently turned away from risk factors to salutogenesis (literally, 'health creation'), in other words, asking 'what keeps people healthy', rather than 'what makes them sick?' Within this movement, attention has been focused on aspects of physical environment which promote good health and on the potentially health creating properties of contact with natural or green environments, commonly referred to as 'green space'.
The aims of this research are to:
- To assess associations between access to green environment and cause specific mortality rates for urban areas in New Zealand
- To infer the mechanisms by which different categories of green environment may be associated with health
Staff involved
- Dr Simon Kingham
- Dr Jamie Pearce
- Dr Rich Mitchell (University of Glasgow, UK)