The healing power of a little time spent in nature is the reason Canada now has a new type of treatment available to its medical professionals: Doctors in the Great White North can now prescribe national park passes to patients.
“There’s almost no medical condition that nature doesn’t make better,” PaRx director Melissa Lem, also a family physician, told the Washington Post.
The PaRx program has partnered with Parks Canada for an initial offering of 100 annual passes for patients who could benefit.
“Visiting a park once is great,” Lem said about why the passes are good for a year’s worth of visits as opposed to just one trip. “But it doesn’t in a very meaningful way reduce the barrier to nature access.”
Time spent outdoors can have a number of positive effects: heart rate variability, lower stress hormones and raising the self esteem of children are all provable beneficial reactions the human body can have to nature.
It also can increase the power of exercise. “Spending time in nature supercharges the benefits,” Lem said of outdoor workouts.
Started in 2019, the PaRx program is now available in four Canadian provinces, and its network of health-care professionals has doubled since adding the park pass prescription, climbing to 2,500 medical professionals who can prescribe one.
The initiative expects to have its eligibility spread to the entirety of Canada by year’s end.
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