Grey nomads don’t need telling that a trip out to a beautiful national park is good for their health and wellbeing … and it seems that the medical profession agrees.
In Canada at least, the ‘nature is the best medicine’ mantra is being taken one step further and doctors can now prescribe patients a national parks pass!
“There’s almost no medical condition that nature doesn’t make better,” said Melissa Lem, a family physician and director of the PaRx initiative, which partnered with Parks Canada to help distribute the initial batch of 100 passes. “Spending time in nature supercharges the benefits.”
While similar programs elsewhere have offered regional or local park visits, Dr Lem told the Washington Post that this was the first such initiative with a national annual pass.
“We need to reduce barriers to nature,” she said. “The park pass makes the message even more powerful and easier to follow … it is a big deal.”
With Parks Canada backing the program, health care professionals can now prescribe a Parks Canada Discovery Pass — worth over C$70 — to a patient.
The pass, which pays for itself in roughly seven visits, offers unlimited admission for a year at over 80 national parks, national historic sites and national marine conservation areas.
“When we can offer real incentives for patients, I think that will be a motivator,” said Dr Lem. “It’s part of the whole master plan … visiting a park once is great, but it doesn’t in a very meaningful way reduce the barrier to nature access.”
The goal is to provide health-care professionals with tools that encourage their patients to spend more time in nature.
Studies have shown that time in nature can lead to a range of benefits, from lower stress hormones and heart rate variability to higher self-esteem.
In a written statement, Canada’s Minister of the Environment, Steven Guilbeault, described the new collaboration as a ‘breakthrough’ in how practitioners treat mental and physical health. With the impacts of Covid-19 still felt across much of the country, it couldn’t come at a better time, he said.
However, Dr Lem warned that it was probably best for medical professions to work the conversations about a pass into a routine health visit.
“We don’t want people banging down their doctors’ doors to ask for a park pass,” she said.
We feel happier when we’re out in the bush by ourselves, not just national parks but anywhere that we’re surrounded by nature away from civilization.
America takes it one step better. You can purchase a seniors life time pass at the age of 62 or over for $80 or an annual seniors pass for $20. Gone up a lot since I purchased mine about 5 years ago for $10. I have a green card that made me qualify.
There are plenty of legal free camps & free State Forests to get away to in Australia. Plus you can smoke in them too unlike National Parks. Advice for a non smoker.