The European Regional Office of the World Health Organizaton (WHO) has launched a new Action Brief on Urban Green Spaces, building on extensive research in the field, including a number of studies by OPENspace.
The Action Brief is a beautifully-illustrated suite of practical guidance on how to maximise the health benefits of urban green spaces.
Designed for urban practitioners, it is based on, and summarises, two recent technical reports by WHO Europe:
‘Urban Green Spaces and Health: A review of evidence’ (2016), which cites a number of OPENspace research papers, and has a chapter co-authored by Professor Catharine Ward Thompson and Dr Eva Silveirinha de Oliveira.
‘Urban Green Space Interventions and Health: A review of impacts and effectiveness’ (2017), which includes our I’DGO and Woods In and Around Town (WIAT) projects as examples of how to assess the health benefits of environmental interventions.
Having been cited by the WHO in its 2007 guidance on Global Age-friendly Cities, OPENspace has become a respected source of evidence for the organisation.
As well as citing our research in publications, WHO has invited Catharine to participate in a number of pan-European meetings and conferences, the most recent of which was the fourth European Conference on Biodiversity and Health in the face of Climate Change (Bonn, June 2017) at which she gave a plenary presentation and was interviewed by MDR, together with Bundesamt für Naturschutz (BfN) President, Beate Jessel.
Check out some of the visuals from the publication below, or access the document in full…
> Download the WHO Europe Action Brief on Urban Green Spaces
> Download Urban Green Spaces and Health: A review of evidence
> Download Urban Green Space Interventions and Health: A review of impacts and effectiveness