Research by the de la Osa-lead team confirms the value of designing to support children’s natural experiences. The group found that “Exposure to greenspace has been associated with mental health benefits in children. . . . This longitudinal study . . . [collected data from] a community cohort of 539 children, from Barcelona province, followed from 3 to 11 years. Long-term exposure to greenspace was characterized at both residential address and school as (i) surrounding greenspace based on satellite-derived indexes (normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and Vegetation Continuous Field (VCF) across different buffers and (ii) distance to the nearest green space. . . . Higher greenspace surrounding home and school were associated with lower levels of anxiety. Our findings suggest that increasing exposure to greenspace, specially at schools, could be included in preventive policies to promote mental health in children.”
Nuria De la Osa, J. Navarro, Eva Penelo, Antonia Valenti, Lourdes Ezpeleta, and Payam Dadvand. “Long-Term Exposure to Greenspace and Anxiety from Preschool and Primary School Children.” Journal of Environmental Psychology, in press, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.102207