A Review of the Health Benefits of Greenness

By Peter James, Rachel F. Banay, J. Hart, Francine Laden. Current Epidemiology Reports, 2015

909 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Researchers are increasingly exploring how neighborhood greenness, or vegetation, may affect health behaviors and outcomes. Greenness may influence health by promoting physical activity and social contact; decreasing stress; and mitigating air pollution, noise, and heat exposure. Greenness is generally measured using satellite-based vegetation indices or land-use databases linked to participants’ addresses. In this review, we found fairly strong evidence for a positive association between greenness and physical activity and a less consistent negative association between greenness and body weight. Research suggests greenness is protective against adverse mental health outcomes, cardiovascular disease, and mortality, though most studies were limited by cross-sectional or ecological design. There is consistent evidence that greenness exposure during pregnancy is positively associated with birth weight, though findings for other birth outcomes are less conclusive. Future research should follow subjects prospectively, differentiate between greenness quantity and quality, and identify mediators and effect modifiers of greenness-health associations.

Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Speech and Hearing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b1368230b2fbd0e563f532845ce41d23ab50eacc

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Citations in the corpus

Green spaces and cognitive development in primary schoolchildren (2015, background): “Moreover, proximity to green spaces, particularly parks, has been suggested to increase physical activity (8), and higher levels of physical activity are related to improved cognitive development (9).”
A systematic map of research exploring the effect of greenspace on mental health (2020, methodology): “…a recognised robust, repeatable, and transparent scientific method that is commonly used in social sciences (Haddaway, Bernes, Jonsson, & Hedlund, 2016; James et al., 2016), and is now increasingly adopted in environmental management and conservation (e.g. Randall, Donnison, Lewis, & James, 2015).”
Exploring pathways linking greenspace to health: Theoretical and methodological guidance (2017, background): “vegetation level) or green spaces such as parks, gardens and forests (hereon referred to generically only as “greenspace” when both greenness and green spaces are meant; Taylor and Hochuli, 2017) are beneficial for multiple measures of health for urban populations in relatively high-income countries”
Usage and perception of urban green space of older adults in the high-density city of Hong Kong (2021, background): “Exposure to UGS is associated with higher level of physical activity (James et al., 2015), especially for walking type of physical activity in Hong Kong (Lin et al., 2020).”
Nature Contact and Human Health: A Research Agenda (2017, background): “Several recent reviews have summarized and evaluated the growing evidence base (Bowler et al. 2010; Hartig et al. 2014; James et al. 2015; Lee and Maheswaran 2011; Martens and Bauer 2013; Russell et al. 2013; Seymour 2016).”