Dr Silvio Caputo (School of Architecture and Planning) will be the co-lead on GreenME, a project which will develop ways in which a broader green care framework can be scaled-up to improve adult mental health and wellbeing equity while contributing to multiple socio-ecological and green land management co-benefits.
GreenME will build on the framework of green care, understood as a three-scale continuum from nature-in-everyday-life (e.g. the existence of green and blue infrastructure for viewing and walks) to nature-based health promotion (the promotion of active interaction with nature such as gardening and conservation) to nature-based therapy (the provision of treatment for individual patients). Using this framework, GreenME will use a transdisciplinary and mixed-methods approach to identify opportunities, barriers, causal pathways and patterns of in/equitable distribution of mental health and wellbeing benefits in seven study countries. Solutions and guidelines will be co-created with local stakeholders. These include a EU framework and country-specific schemes for bolstering green care along with an identified community of green care actors, and a training program for nature-based therapy providers informed by empirical evidence. Replicable partnership models and guidelines to design impactful cross-sectorial green care systems will also be developed, with national healthcare systems and local governments amongst the beneficiaries. A higher uptake of nature-based therapy and a general reframing of the green infrastructure functionality will be some of the most significant impacts that this project will generate.