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New Nature for Health resource hub supports healthcare sites to improve patient outcomes

The new online Nature for Health Resource Hub for Healthcare Sites will support healthcare professionals to make life-changing nature-based interventions more available to patients and staff. The hub is the result of a collaboration between Natural England and the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare. The resources are aimed at all healthcare sites and offer much-needed support with developing green spaces for health and biodiversity. It’s free to use and will be a one-stop repository for tools, guides and information about creating and managing green spaces on healthcare sites.

Green spaces are increasingly recognised as valuable tools in healthcare, with the potential to enhance patient care, staff wellbeing, sustainability and nature recovery. Research has shown that spending two hours a week in nature is associated with good health and wellbeing and even just a view of trees can speed recovery time. Planning and developing these green spaces on healthcare sites is an important part of the process. Maximising the biodiversity of the NHS estate through good management will support patients, staff, communities and wildlife.

Despite a variety of existing resources, the right information can be hard to track down and needs to be used alongside other tools for maximum benefit. The Nature for Health hub has been designed to bring everything together in one place and make finding the right information at the right time much simpler. A broad range of healthcare professionals from clinicians to sustainability leads will now be able to access the tailored, practical resources needed to develop healthcare environments for health and biodiversity. 

The project has also produced a report that highlights the benefits of integrating nature into NHS training programmes and embedding green space development into NHS policy and practice. A cultural shift within the health service is at the heart of successfully embedding nature into healthcare. It is hoped this hub will provide a vital first step in making this possible by providing the tools and information needed to create healthy, nature-positive spaces on healthcare sites.

Want to know more about the project and how you can access the resources? Join members of the project team from Natural England, the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and the NHS for a webinar on 25 June at 12pm. Book your place via Eventbrite.

The hub includes a new free Nature and Healthcare learning module created by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare, RSK and Healthcare Ocean. It is designed for clinical, estates and procurement teams and is available online and on-demand.