Measuring nature's impact on health: Developing a citizen science framework

With the increase in chronic diseases, costs of health provision and the growing importance of health and wellbeing becoming of increasing concern for UK policy makers and public health officials. The rapid rise in the numbers... [ view full abstract ]

With the increase in chronic diseases, costs of health provision and the growing importance of health and wellbeing becoming of increasing concern for UK policy makers and public health officials. The rapid rise in the numbers of eco-health programmes - including environmental volunteering activities - emerging in the past decade can be seen to address these concerns. Calls for a green agenda within the UK health care systems follows the growing evidence that suggests nature's benefits on people's health and wellbeing. However, further detailed research is needed to explore the types of health benefits generated from eco-health programmes as well as mediating mechanisms. The study aimed to develop a measurement framework in order to provide to strengthen and progress existing research on the impact that engaging in environmental volunteering activities has on a person's health and wellbeing. This is done by using The Conservation Volunteers national volunteering programme as a case study. The study combines both participatory design research methodologies with exploratory and spatial data analysis in order to develop develops a novel data collection framework and sampling methodology which recruits volunteers as 'citizen scientists' to capture nature's impact on their health and wellbeing. In this way, findings shows that through using such approaches provides a more detailed understanding of user requirements that is enriched through the knowledge gained through a real life context.