Resonate

There is growing evidence that contact with ‘nature’ can help mitigate some of society’s most pressing health and social challenges including heart disease, diabetes, depression, and loneliness. Various interventions have thus been established to support people better access nature to promote health and well-being and reduce disease.

Despite the potential of such ‘green care’, ‘nature-based social prescribing’ or ‘Nature-based Therapy (NbT)’ interventions we still know relatively little about: a) their effectiveness for different health/social outcomes; b) the equitability of their use across different social groups; c) their environmental, economic, and social impacts and opportunities; or d) the barriers and enablers of establishing and expanding such programmes alongside existing health and social care systems across Europe.

The current 4-year Horizon Europe €6.3 million funded project, ‘Building individual and community RESilience thrOugh NATurE-based therapies’ (RESONATE) will explore all of these issues through a review of interventions globally, nine NbT Case Studies, and three Social Innovation Actions which will develop nature-based resilience hubs to demonstrate best-practice for scaling-up and scaling-out successful interventions. The ultimate goal is to provide practical guidelines and tools for NbT implementation, and outcomes are expected to have a significant impact on the future development and use of NbTs in health and social care across Europe.

Led by environmental psychologist Dr. Mat White at Vienna University’s Cognitive Science Hub, the consortium consists of world leaders in NbT research, practice, policy, and innovation in Austria (Green Care Austria, Paracelsus Medizinische Privatuniversität Salzburg), Belgium (EuroHealthNet), Bulgaria (Meditcinsky Universitet-Plovdiv), Denmark (Københavns Universitet), Italy (Universita degli Studi di Padova, ETIFOR), the Netherlands (Natuurvoormensen Omgevingspsychologisch Onderzoek, Universiteit Twente), Spain (ISGLOBAL, AZTI), Sweden (Nature Based Solution Institute, Uppsala Universitet), and the UK (University of Exeter, funded by UKRI), with additional expert oversight from leading NbT researchers/practitioners in Australia (University of Wollongong), Canada (University of British Columbia) and the US (Cornell University, University of California San Francisco).

Other members of the team at the University of Vienna include psychologists Prof. Sabine Pahl and Prof. Martin Voracek, who will support the integration of data from the various sub-projects from the participating countries. Julia Egger is the postdoc project leader for RESONATE.

The project has started on June 1^st 2023 and runs until May 31^st 2027. RESONATE is funded by the European Union's Horizons Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 101081420 and matching funds from the UK Research & Innovation agency.

A RESONATE website providing extensive details about the project is currently under development and will be available soon. For further details please contact: Dr. Mat White: mathew.white@univie.ac.at