A new program sweeping across Canada enables healthcare providers to prescribe a year-long pass to the country's national parks for patients dealing with mental and physical health concerns.
Healthcare providers in four Canadian provinces are taking a unique approach to addressing soaring rates of depression and anxiety: they’re prescribing nature.
Doctors, nurses and other providers are prescribing year-long Parks Canada Discovery Passes, worth roughly $70, to patients struggling with mental and physical health issues through a national program called PaRx, or A Prescription for Nature. The prescription offers unlimited admission to more than 80 national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas.
“I can’t think of a better way to kick off 2022 than being able to give the gift of nature to my patients,” Melissa Lem, MD, a family physician and Director of PaRx, said in a blog by the BC Parks Foundation, which launched the program in November 2020. “There's a strong body of evidence on the health benefits of nature time, from better immune function and life expectancy to reduced risk of heart disease, depression and anxiety, and I’m excited to see those benefits increase through this new collaboration.”
The program was started in British Columbia and has since been adopted in Ontario, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, with more than 1,000 healthcare providers registered. It won a prestigious Joule Innovation prize from the Canadian Medical Association and was recognized by the World Health Organization in its recent COP26 Special Report on Climate Change and Health.
Lem and other others supporting the program say it encourages people with stressful health concerns, particularly behavioral health issues like depression and anxiety, to get out and enjoy nature, and that studies have proven the beneficial effects of being outdoors.
“We see health benefits in all sorts of different spheres,” Angie Woodbury, a student at the Max Rady College of Medicine, part of the University of Manitoba, and an active participant in and researchers for the PaRx program, said in a January 2022 story published by the university. “In cardiac health, in stress and anxiety, in pain, energy and mood, things like that. We know that spending two hours … in nature reduces your levels of the stress hormone cortisol.”
“A lot of people are under the assumption [that] you’re healthy if you take your medications and exercise, or go to the doctor,” Woodbury added. “But [roughly] 80% of your health has to do more with social determinants of health, the built environment that you live in — your level of income, whether you’re able to afford medications or healthy foods. Social prescribing is trying to address those other things that impact your health.”
And they’re not stopping there. Lem recently told the Canadian news service TriCity News that the program is looking to partner with transit organizations to provide free transportation to parks for new Canadians and inner-city residents.
“We need to reduce barriers to nature,” she said, adding that she hopes the entire country will participate in the program by the end of this year. The park pass prescription “makes the message even more powerful and easier to follow. It is a big deal.”
Eric Wicklund is the associate content manager and senior editor for Innovation at HealthLeaders.