Webinar - Prescribing Nature: Designing for Health, Equity, and Connection

Zoom Webinar

Zip code is one of the strongest predictors of life expectancy, but why? The research indicates that this is less about proximity to health care facilities and more about access to environmental and social infrastructure: safe streets, clean air, quality housing, and nearby parks. In short, it’s about the built and natural environments — and how they are planned, designed, managed, and maintained.

This webinar, presented in partnership with The Learning Network of the Nature and Health Alliance, is a conversation about the intersection of public health, landscape architecture, and equity. Together, the panelists will explore how nature can be part of a systemic solution to health issues and disparities and how urban design and public health can become integrated practices.

Dr. Robert Zarr brings the perspective of a physician working within the transactional norms of the healthcare system but advocating for a new approach: prescriptions that connect people to nature as a core part of wellness. His work explores how the absence of nature contributes to poor health outcomes and what implementation of nature-based “prescriptions” might look like in real life. 

Chelina Odbert complements this with a designer’s view. It’s not enough to prescribe nature if the built environment itself is unsafe, unequal, or inaccessible. Her firm’s work insists that for anyone to benefit from their surroundings, those spaces must first meet baseline standards of inclusion, equity, and dignity.