Working with Natural England, the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare has developed an online resource hub for healthcare green space projects. The Nature for Health hub will support healthcare professionals to make life-changing, nature-based interventions more available to patients and staff, with resources appropriate for all healthcare sites 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 hub also 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.
Embedding nature
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.
Members of the project team from Natural England, the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and the NHS are hosting a free webinar on June 25 at 12 noon.
The tree planting scheme for healthcare sites will also run again this year. The fully-funded tree bundles are available in three sizes. The tree planting season runs from November until March, but Trusts should place their orders now.
