Identifying Metrics for Health and Outdoor Initiatives: A Toolkit for Community Evaluators

Abstract

Rising rates of urbanization and resource exploitation have reduced opportunities for human interaction with nature and motivated an expansion of interest in research and development of initiatives to achieve human health benefits from contact with nature. Despite a growing base of evidence linking health benefits to experience with the outdoors, little research has been conducted to generate evidence-based strategies for implementing health and nature interventions in practice. To better assist communities in developing effective health and outdoor initiatives, I conducted a comprehensive review of metrics used by national community outdoor initiatives to evaluate health outcomes. I compared community metrics to measures supported by scientific research and consolidated the results into a guideline for those developing metrics to evaluate community health and outdoor programs.