Advancing Environmental Epidemiology to Assess the Beneficial Influence of the Natural Environment on Human Health and Well-Being

Abstract

Environmental health research can be oriented across a continuum of effects ranging from adverse to cobenefits to salutogenic. We argue that the salutogenic end of the continuum is insufficiently represented in research and as a basis for environmental protection, even though there is growing evidence that the natural environment plays a critical role in blunting adverse effects and promoting human health and well-being. Thus, we advocate for advancing environmental health research through environmental epidemiology that more fully and directly accounts for the salutogenic effects of the natural environment on individual well-being by (1) defining "natural environments" broadly, from pristine natural areas to urban green infrastructure; (2) considering exposure comprehensively to encompass residential, occupational, and recreational settings, local and distant, day-to-day and occasional; (3) doing individual-level assessments that include both health and well-being outcomes and one's experience of nature, including potential mediation by connectedness to nature and individual perceptions and preferences, as well as sociocultural and demographic effect modifiers; and (4) collecting longitudinal and nationally representative data.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1.

Continuum of environmental health research: from adverse to salutogenic. The green arrow depicts the influence of salutary factors that pull individual well-being toward the salutogenic outcomes, while the red arrow depicts the influence of environmental stressors that pull individual well-being toward adverse outcomes. Developed from refs and .

Figure 2.

Experience of nature (e.g., refs and 47) and individual well-being: Grounding the benefits of natural environments to individual wellbeing on exposure science and the concept of dose of nature.