Industry News

Community Health is Rooted in Trees: Healthy Trees, Healthy Lives – Tennessee

By Ashley Kite-Rowland, Urban and Community Forestry Partnership Coordinator

Doyou feel better after a walk in the woods? Less stressed when walking down a tree lined street? If so, you are experiencing what a growing body of research has verified — trees are good for human health and well-being.

Healthy Trees, Healthy Lives, a national campaign to raise awareness of the connections between human health and trees, will officially launch in Tennessee in June 2023. This Tennessee Division of Forestry initiative will highlight the numerous mental, physical, economic, and financial benefits healthy trees offer, not only to individuals who experience them firsthand, but to the entire community. These benefits include decreased asthma rates, increased physical activity, lower rates of depression, greater community connectedness, healthier waterways, lower crime rates, and more.

One key audience of Healthy Trees, Healthy Lives initiative are health care providers. The initiative asks health care providers to recommend spending time outside among trees as a supplement to other care their patients may need, to advocate for tree-filled spaces around clinics and hospitals, and to see community forests as a key component of public health. By making this connection between trees and health known and having time among trees “prescribed” to patients, community leaders will hopefully begin to consider trees and greenspace to be initial aspects of infrastructure and provide easy access to these health promoting environments to all community members. By increasing access to trees and greenspace through the state from big cities to small towns, we can increase the health and well-being of Tennesseans and the communities in which they live.

To kick off the Tennessee Healthy Trees, Healthy Lives initiative, materials that promote spending more time outdoors among trees, caring for community forests, and ensuring equitable access to greenspace will be shared in medical offices, health departments, counseling centers, schools, and universities throughout the state. If interested in this campaign or helping to spread the word, please reach out to Ashley Kite-Rowland at Ashley.Kite-Rowland@tn.gov. Also, please visit the national website https://healthytreeshealthylives.org. The website provides links to research on the benefits of trees and free resources for you to share the Healthy Trees, Healthy Lives message in your community.