Community Spotlight: Prescribe Outside

For many youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, safe and accessible green space can be hard to come by — an unfortunate circumstance, considering the plethora of health benefits that accompany time spent in nature. But Prescribe Outside, a partnership fostered by the Nature Everywhere Communities initiative, aims to bridge that gap. By providing physicians and families with tools to locate and use public green spaces, Prescribe Outside is working to improve the health and wellness of Philadelphia’s children. 

For a city in which up to one in three children live in poverty, removing barriers to accessing nature’s benefits for children and families is crucial. And from a statistical perspective, Philadelphia is not lacking in green space. Ninety-five percent of city residents can walk to a park within 10 minutes from where they live, and the city boasts 10,797 acres of parkland (2023 ParkScore Report). 

However, there are ranging perceptions of safety and a lack of familiarity with green spaces among residents. In a 2014 survey, 60% of Philadelphia city residents said they visit a park “infrequently” or “never,” and 88% reported having never attended a park program due to “lack of information.”

But doctors can change this. With their expertise and network of patients, they can be trusted messengers to help the public access park services and experience the positive health benefits that can accompany time in the outdoors. In a Community Health Needs Assessment, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found that 89% of respondents named healthcare providers as their number one source of health information for their children. With the mounting evidence supporting nature’s health benefits, many providers are turning towards nature prescriptions for their patients. However, clinicians don’t always have expertise in the places and programs that are easily accessible for each of their patients. This is where Prescribe Outside comes in.

Prescribe Outside is a partnership among several partners, each with a distinct and important role: 

• Awbury Arboretum offers 56 acres of free and public greenspace, gardens and farms that cater to the Northwest community. It provides both administrative support as well as a welcoming space for Prescribe Outside programs..
• Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), the nation’s first pediatric hospital and a leading advocate for children and adolescents, has pediatricians who write nature prescriptions for their patients — the heart of Prescribe Outside’s work.
• Let’s Go Outdoors (LGO), an outdoor-focused organization with 10 years of connecting city communities to environmental experiences, provides free programs for patients near CHOP health clinics and at Awbury Arboretum. 
• After participants complete a Prescribe Outside event facilitated by LGO, the USDA Forest Service, in conjunction with Temple’s Center for Sustainable Communities, is positioned to collect data via survey to measure the impact of the program. 
• Philadelphia Parks & Recreation provides expertise, programming space and information to healthcare providers about the park resources available for patients.
• Sierra Club (Pennsylvania Chapter) provides program planning and support as part of their “Outdoors for All” Campaign.

For Prescribe Outside, equitable access to nature means not only identifying safe, accessible green spaces nearby, but also developing a positive lasting relationship with nature — a relationship that results in behavioral changes, with lasting effects on patients’ health and overall wellness. Although the collaborative already had a worthy mission and powerful partners, the Prescribe Outside team found themselves dreaming bigger — seeking to expand into a region-wide program over time to include CHOP’s 30+ primary care sites. That’s why Prescribe Outside applied to become a Nature Everywhere Community. 

As one of the 19 inaugural Nature Everywhere Communities, the members of the Prescribe Outside team hope to use the initiative’s resources and technical expertise to bring their mission to more patients, in a more effective manner. By bringing together influential partners in the Philadelphia area, the team is poised for partner mapping, community assessments and action planning that will directly influence the utilization of parks by children and families for the benefit of children’s health and well-being.

Nature Everywhere Communities initiative

The Nature Everywhere Communities initiative was launched in November 2023 by the Children & Nature Network, National League of Cities and KABOOM!, with the goal of advancing equitable access to nature everywhere children live, learn and play in 100 communities by 2025. 

The effort builds on lessons learned over the past nine years of providing technical assistance, training, resources and grants in more than 50 U.S. cities through Cities Connecting Children to Nature, a program specifically designed for municipal leaders. Nature Everywhere Communities is an expansion of this proven approach, as it welcomes leadership from both city and regional governments as well as school districts and the nonprofit, philanthropic and private sectors. 

Through a competitive application process, 19 communities were selected to join the inaugural Nature Everywhere Communities cohort. Selected communities will receive two years of strategic planning, technical support and start-up funding to develop and implement community-driven plans for connecting children to nature-based experiences and learning.

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