Nature and the Outdoors Vital for Kids

Time spent outdoors is now being considered as one of the main markers for Canadian kids' health and activity levels. Exposure to fresh air and nature has been shown not only to raise overall health, but also to alleviate anxiety, and improve concentration and feelings of wellbeing. 

Since 2005, Active Healthy Kids Canada has been issuing “report cards” with the objective of assessing Canada’s commitment to active, healthy children at all levels: at  schools, in the community, and  as it is regulated at the municipal, provincial and national levels. The Active Kids Canada Report Card for 2011 has just been released, with a new twist:  the report card now includes an indicator for “Nature and the Outdoors.” 

The analysis of outdoor activity alongside other indicators such as playground equipment, community programming and educational policy, is based on the idea that even spending a little more time outside offers major potential benefits to kids for becoming active and healthy. And while a conclusive “Nature and the Outdoors” grade for the 2011 Report Card has not been decided (in light of the difficulty in achieving comprehensive data on the subject), the research has led to new findings which will hopefully lead to increased outdoor activity in Canadian children.

For instance, it’s been discovered that as they progress from elementary school to high school, kids spend much less time exercising outdoors, even though spending time outside can help alleviate anxiety and similar conditions in children while improving their concentration and mood. The trend away from outdoor exercise in children has been called “nature deficit disorder,” by American researcher Richard Louv – a trend this new addition to Active Healthy Kids Canada’s yearly Report Card hopes to counteract.

Stressing that “being out in nature” can be as simple as spending an afternoon sitting under a tree, researchers like Louv and Leanne Clare of the David Suzuki Foundation insist that the first step toward healthier children is getting them to spend more time in the outdoors. 

Those who have directed their efforts toward research on the relationship between nature and healthy children hope to use the knowledge they are gaining to encourage educators and communities to implement nature in their programming, a tactic they believe can be applied to anything from working with troubled children to practicing math. While this year’s results were inconclusive, researchers hope to draw attention to this relationship in the interest of advising schools, communities and policy makers on how to improve the health of Canadian children with nature.

Links to this and previous years’ Report Cards, as well as explanations of Healthy Active Kids Canada’s mission statement and methodology can be found here: www.activehealthykids.ca/ReportCard/2011ReportCardOverview.aspx