Healthy ecosystems are essential for human health and survival. We all depend on clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, healthy food supplies, green spaces for recreation, and contact with wildlife to enrich our lives. There is growing evidence that we gain specific physical and mental health benefits from living in clean, healthy ecosystems and from having access to natural areas and biodiversity.
EcoHealth Ontario (EHO) is a collaborative of professionals in the fields of public health, medicine, education, planning and the environment. We are working together to increase our understanding of the relationships between environment and health with the aim of finding ways to increase the quality and diversity of the urban and rural spaces in which we live.
EcoHealth Ontario gratefully acknowledges the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Forests Ontario, and our Steering Committee members for their generous support of our work.
NEW!
Check out EcoHealth Ontario’s NEW RESEARCH, three new Case Studies, and our report: A Conceptual Framework to Understand the Business Case for Ecohealth
Ecohealth
Greenspaces are found in cities and the countryside. They typically include public spaces such as parks, conservation areas, greenways, trails, urban and rural forests, street trees, community gardens, school grounds, shorelines and ravines. They also include private and institutional spaces such as gardens, rooftops, cemeteries, golf courses, and outdoor spaces associated with businesses, hospitals, care homes and universities. Green spaces provide important ecological functions that, in turn, provide us with many public health benefits.
Need a boost to your health? Watch this video to learn how our health is connected to green space!
Tools to Build a Shared Vision
Practitioners, policy-makers and decision-makers can easily incorporate ecohealth practices and principles that build a closer connection between us and nature. Collaborating across sectors, advocating for greenspace policies and sharing information about health evidence for the protection of greenspaces are all ways to practice ecohealth.
What's in a Greenspace that Makes Us Feel So Good?
Resources
EcoHealth Ontario members have contributed to a number of research projects that explore the connections between ecosystems and people, and that also provide examples of projects that have been initiated to incorporate ecohealth.
“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
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