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3 publications listed under Reciprocal healing

Cultivating Reciprocity—The Nature and Health Challenge

2026 / Reciprocal healing

Across recent decades the disciplines devoted to nature and health have amassed impressive evidence that nature benefits people’s physical, psychological, and social well-being (Frumkin et al., 2017; Wolf, Lam, McKeen, Richardson, van den Bosch & Bardekjian, 2020). Many of the research articles call out two alarming and interacting trends: (1) increased global urbanization that threatens biodiversity and thus reduces opportunity for urban residents to interact with nature; and (2) equally compelling evidence of inequities of nature access to underserved populations, which denies them of extensive health benefits of nature experiences (Rigolon et al., 2024). While increasing both access and awareness of nature’s beneficial effects for all people is essential, it is also imperative to learn to care for our ever-dwindling natural spaces and ecosystems. Our concern for prevailing nature and health research is the focus on benefits quantification, rarely addressing the relational opportunities of values and behaviors that can arise from deep connection to nature. The limitation of ecosystem services and other nature-based solutions constructs is that they seek to demonstrate nature value as a commodity that is monetized and treated as an economic product. They conceptually optimize nature functionality to serve humanity, only recently recognizing broader cultural ecosystem services (Comberti, Thornton, Wyllie de Echeverria, & Patterson, 2015; Lele, Springate-Baginski, Lakerveld, Deb, & Dash, 2013). As decision-makers and the public translate health benefits research to programs and prescriptions, increased use of local greenspace can lead to overuse and degradation, a version of the tragedy of the commons. Continued focus on human-centric benefits of nature fails to recognize that mutual care or reciprocal relationship with nature is essential for both local natural systems and the health and survival of the planet (Varanasi, 2020).

Taking the Long View for Oceans and Human Health Connection through Community-Driven Science

2021 / Reciprocal healing, Indigenous communities, Blue spaces, Health and well-being, Community science

Figure 1. Olympic Region Harmful Algal Bloom (ORHAB) partners and sampling sites. The most proactive approach to resolving current health and climate crises will require a long view, focused on establishing and fostering partnerships to identify and eliminate root causes of the disconnect between humans and nature. We describe the lessons learned through a unique scientific partnership that addresses a specific crisis, harmful algal blooms (HABs), along the northeast Pacific Ocean coast, that blends current-day technology with observational knowledge of Indigenous communities. This integrative scientific strategy resulted in creative solutions for forecasting and managing HAB risk in the Pacific Northwest as a part of the US Ocean and Human Health (OHH) program. Specific OHH projects focused on: Understanding genetic responses of Tribal members to toxins in the marine environment Knowledge sharing by elders during youth camps Establishing an early warning program to alert resource managers of HABs are explicit examples of proactive strategies used to address environmental problems. The research and monitoring projects with Tribal communities taught the collaborating non-Indigenous scientists the value of reciprocity, highlighting both the benefits from and protection of oceans that promote our well-being. Effective global oceans and human health initiatives require a collective action that gives equal respect to all voices to promote forward thinking solutions for ocean health.

Focusing Attention on Reciprocity Between Nature and Humans can be the Key to Reinvigorating Planetary Health

2020 / Reciprocal healing

In industrialized and urbanized societies, medical science focuses primarily on trauma and diseases, and most environmental work attempts to remediate natural and anthropogenic degradation. This essay raises the importance of shifting individual and societal attention to preventive and precautionary measures to maintain human and ecological health. It points to the growing body of research that nature (wilderness to green and blue space) is necessary for people’s physical, mental, and emotional health. Such evidence should persuade the public and policymakers to proactively conserve ecosystems, reducing the need to rescue depleted species or repair and restore their degraded habitats. This paper also describes the creative tension between the need for evidence-based research to demonstrate the health benefits of nature, which can lead to public health policies that make nature exposure widely accessible, and the need to ensure that nature is not viewed merely as a ‘‘service provider’’ from which humans can continue to extract health benefits. The author suggests that a drastic change is needed in the prevailing attitude of dominance over nature. This essay concludes with a plea for focused attention on reciprocal healing of both nature and humans, which can occur only if our interaction with nature—be it wilderness, an urban park, or a garden—is sustained and respectful. The author suggests that the nature-and-health paradigm may be the game-changing strategy needed to sustain grassroots awareness for halting and hopefully reversing the trajectory of decline in planetary health.