A growing number of doctors are giving prescriptions not just for medications or tests, but for spending time outdoors in nature.
The pandemic has highlighted the health benefits of more outdoor time, and these doctors are responding to that, particularly pediatricians.
Dr. Maya Moody, president-elect of the Missouri chapter of the American Acadmey of Pediatrics, told Thomson Reuters Foundation that pediatricians have been seeing increases in child anxiety and obesity since the pandemic began, and that idea sprang out of that. She is now one of about a dozen pediatricians in Missouri who give nature prescriptions.
She explained: “When I give a prescription, it’s specific, just like an antibiotic. They use it for this many days, and I say go to this park.” Maryland Dr. Stacy Beller Stryer is an associate medical director with online platform Park Rx America, which helps medical professionals write nature prescriptions.
The site has a database of thousands of parks and public lands, that doctors can search, filtering by activity, distance from a patient’s home and amenities such as playgrounds when writing a prescription.
