Summer 2026 Newsletter

COMMUNITY DINNER | SEPTEMBER 22, 2026

Increasingly landscape architects, garden designers, and healthcare professionals are asked to create gardens that meet the physical, psychological, emotional, and social needs of a wide range of users. In their latest book, landscape architect Daniel Winterbottom and occupational therapist Amy Wagenfeld present a collaborative approach that successfully translates the evidence-based principles of therapeutic design into practice using case studies from around the world. During our September 22 community dinner, Amy and Daniel will share takeaways from their latest collaboration.

Register by September 15

10TH ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM | APRIL 21, 2027

Save the date for the 10th annual Northwest Nature and Health Symposium on April 21, 2027. These annual convenings serve as a dynamic gathering space for students, researchers, healthcare providers, community members, and decision-makers to connect, learn, and collaborate. Together, we explore cutting-edge research, innovative policies and programs, and the power of reciprocal relationships. Our speakers collaborate closely with communities disproportionately affected by health and environmental injustices, work to address green space inequities, and bring vital historical and cultural perspectives to environmental history and outdoor recreation. As speakers are confirmed, we’ll share their bios on our social channels (Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn).

Have ideas to share for the 2027 symposium? Let our planning team know.

With Gratitude

Our community gatherings could not happen without the generosity of the REI Cooperative Action Fund. We are grateful, not just for their support, but for the Fund’s genuine commitment to building a more inclusive and accessible outdoors.

Since 2014, our Research Collaborative has pushed boundaries and sparked new conversations in the field of nature and health. This transdisciplinary team has co-authored 21 novel publications in 2026, covering diverse topics such as Roadless Rule protections, Environmental Generational Amnesia, the restorative power of blue spaces, and Indigenous well-being frameworks.

Here are a few of the Collaborative’s latest papers:

1. Assessing the Value of the U.S. Roadless Rule for People and Nature
   For more than a hundred years, U.S. forest policy has recognized that protecting forested watersheds is key to safeguarding water supplies. The 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule set aside roughly 60 million acres of National Forest land as Inventoried Roadless Areas. The rule limits road building and commercial logging in these areas to protect soil, water, biodiversity, and recreation. In this study, researchers looked at what’s at stake if Roadless Rule protections were weakened.
2. Environmental Generational Amnesia
   In a new entry for Springer’s Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, Peter Kahn synthesizes three decades of work on Environmental Generational Amnesia. Each generation constructs its sense of a normal natural world from the environment it encounters as children, and as that baseline shifts downward, profound environmental losses go unrecognized. Mitigation can begin close to home through children’s direct interaction with an even modestly more wild and biodiverse natural world.
3. The Restorative Power of Blue Spaces: A 19-Country Study
   Living in cities can drain a person’s mental and emotional energy. To recharge, many people turn to natural places. Blue spaces — like rivers, lakes, and coasts — are some of the most popular spots for restoration. But researchers still don’t know much about how the type or quality of these blue spaces affects mental recovery, or how feeling connected to nature plays a role. Using survey data from 17,131 people, researchers looked at how much a recent visit to a blue space helped participants “rest and recover their ability to focus” and feel “part of nature.”
4. A Systematic Scoping Review for Decolonial Public and Global Health: Indigenous Frameworks and Models of Wellbeing From Turtle Island and MoananuiāKea
   This scoping review looked at how Indigenous communities and scholars from Turtle Island (North America) and Moananuiākea (the Pacific) have defined well-being in their own models, frameworks, and theories. The authors argue that equitable public and global health needs to draw on diverse ways of understanding well-being, including decolonial perspectives. Indigenous frameworks tend to be holistic and tied to ecological health, while Western approaches often treat well-being as an individual, compartmentalized issue — which can narrow health practice and reinforce disparities. Until now, no review had brought together the growing body of Indigenous-developed frameworks in this area.

View all 2026 Papers

Quantifying the Healthcare Cost Savings of Spending Time in Nature

In spring 2025, the Center was awarded a McIntire-Stennis Cooperative Forestry Research award to begin assessing the healthcare costs savings of spending time in nature in Washington state. Using satellite-derived vegetation data (NDVI) and a benefit transfer methodology based on a landmark study of five million Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California, we estimated how per-capita healthcare costs vary across ten levels of residential greenness in Washington.

The results reveal a clear pattern: residents living in the least green neighborhoods face estimated annual healthcare costs of approximately $6,473 per person, compared to roughly $5,939 for those in the greenest areas, a difference of nearly $533 per person per year. Notably, the relationship is not linear: the cost savings associated with moving from moderate to high greenness levels are significantly larger than those associated with moving from low to moderate levels. This dose-response pattern suggests that as residential vegetation exposure increases, healthcare cost savings may accelerate.

We will share additional details about this project over the coming months.

Learn more about this project

Reconnecting with Nature: A Summer Intern’s Journey

Over the summer, our science communications intern, Anika Vinayak, took a thoughtful approach to her work — reflecting on how her own relationship with nature has shifted across different stages of life. She turned those personal insights into compelling narratives that make the science of nature and health feel both relatable and actionable. She also built out resource directories designed to connect children, college students, and older adults with meaningful, accessible nature experiences — no matter where they are in life.

Read the Story

NATIONAL PUBLIC LANDS DAY | SEPTEMBER 26

National Public Lands Day is coming up — the biggest single-day volunteer event for our public lands. It lands on the fourth Saturday of September, and thousands of people will be out there pulling invasive weeds, clearing trails, planting native species, and picking up trash. It’s a chance to give back to the parks, forests, and green spaces that give us so much — clean air, a place to hike and camp, or just sit still for a minute.

Find a Volunteer Opportunity

Free National and State Park Days
From lush temperate rainforests and rugged coastlines to alpine meadows and glacier-capped peaks, the Pacific Northwest is home to an abundance of diverse state and national parks. During select holidays throughout the year, entrance to some parks are free. These fee-free days provide a great opportunity to visit a new place or an old favorite.

Self-Guided Forest Bathing
How do you relax and recharge? You are invited to learn and practice forest bathing, a nature immersion activity that has been shown to increase health and well-being. To get started, check out the handout or follow along with the audio guide, courtesy of UW Botanic Gardens.

Campus Nature Breaks
Our campus holds a collection of quiet, restorative green spaces — places where you can pause, breathe deeply, and let your senses reset. Whether you linger for a few minutes or lose track of time entirely, a small nature break can bring you back to your day feeling refreshed and re-centered.

We invite you to join our different channels to learn more about the Nature and Health movement and to connect with others in the field.

• Opt into our newsletter
• Sign up for our listserv
• Join us on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn

Interested in collaborating with us? Let us know at natureandhealth@uw.edu!

Our cross-cutting research and policy engagement improves the lives of our communities. With your support, we can better understand how nature affects human health, how to best leverage these benefits, and how to implement policies that make nature more accessible to all communities.

Contributions of any size will help sustain our cutting-edge research, our community-building efforts, recognize equitable leaders in the field of nature and health, and support the next generation of researchers. Thank you.

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