Environmental Psychology Vienna

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 improve people's access to nature, to promote health and well-being and to reduce diseases. So-called Nature-based therapies (NbTs) aim to reduce the prevalence of a range of acute and chronic physical and mental health issues and aim to complement standard care by supporting people’s contact with the natural world.

Despite the potential of such interventions, which are also often referred to as ‘green care’ or ‘nature-based social prescribing’, we still know relatively little about a) their effectiveness on different health/social outcomes, b) the equitability of their use across different social groups, c) their environmental, economic and social impacts and opportunities, and d) the barriers and enablers for establishing and expanding such programmes alongside existing health and social care systems across Europe.

RESONATE aims to explore NbTs through the analysis of interventions taken across the globe, nine bespoke case studies, and three social innovation actions (=Resilience Hubs) in order to demonstrate a best practice for scaling-up and scaling-out successful interventions. The project thus not only provides empirical insights, but also practical guidelines and tools for NbT implementation.
Specifically, RESONATE …
•    … supports multiple Horizon Europe goals by contributing to the creation of more resilient, inclusive, and just societies that leave no one behind, whilst ensuring that individual, societal, and planetary health go hand in hand.
•    … increases awareness and acceptance of the importance of NbTs and their benefits among the public, multi-sectoral stakeholders, and policy makers.
•    … helps strengthen the causal evidence base and build a stronger research foundation for NbTs.
•    … compiles good practices and demonstrate how successful NbT collaboration and implementation can be achieved.
•    … demonstrates how NbTs can be implemented and benefit communities in these different settings. It also shows how NbTs can be cost-effective and generate income streams.

Whilst the project consortium consists of dozens of experts from across the globe, the University of Vienna is in charge of project management and cross-consortium data curation & analysis. Our team consists of Mat White (Project Lead), Julia Egger (Project Manager), Addi Wala (Organisational Assistant), and Valentina Hampejs (Data Analyst). Additionally, Sabine Pahl, Ulrich Tran, and Martin Voracek support the integration of data collected as part of the various sub-projects in the participating countries.
The project started on 1 June 2023 and runs until 31 May 2027. RESONATE is funded by the European Union's Horizons Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 101081420 and is co-funded by the UK Research & Innovation agency.

Duration: 1 June 2023 to 31 May 2027
Funding: Horizon Europe
RESONATE Website