Citation:

Silva, R., K. Rogers, AND T. Buckley. Advancing Environmental Epidemiology to Assess the Beneficial Influence of the Natural Environment on Human Health and Well-Being. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. American Chemical Society, Washington, DC, 52(17):9545–9555, (2018). https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.8b01781

Impact/Purpose:

In this commentary we argue for greater research emphasis on the benefits that are derived from the natural environment rather than the current focus on adverse health impacts. A more complete reveal of these benefits will bolster justification for environmental protection and to a higher standard than disease prevention. We further argue for a research approach based on individual-level survey to assess subjective well-being and factors that influence one’s perception and access to the natural environment. This research will complement aggregate approaches to evaluating the influence of the environment on wellbeing such as EPA’s Well-Being Index as well as the EnviroAtlas that provides objective overlays of ecosystem services.

Description:

Environmental health research can be oriented across a continuum of effects ranging from adverse to cobenefits to salutogenic. We argue that the salutogenic end of the continuum is insufficiently represented in research and as a basis for environmental protection, even though there is growing evidence that the natural environment plays a critical role in blunting adverse effects and promoting human health and well-being. Thus, we advocate for advancing environmental health research through environmental epidemiology that more fully and directly accounts for the salutogenic effects of the natural environment on individual well-being by (1) defining “natural environments” broadly, from pristine natural areas to urban green infrastructure; (2) considering exposure comprehensively to encompass residential, occupational, and recreational settings, local and distant, day-to-day and occasional; (3) doing individual-level assessments that include both health and well-being outcomes and one’s experience of nature, including potential mediation by connectedness to nature and individual perceptions and preferences, as well as sociocultural and demographic effect modifiers; and (4) collecting longitudinal and nationally representative data.

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