Dr. Gina South and her team conducted a pilot RCT to understand how to increase the time that urban postpartum women spend in nature. Time spent in nature has been shown to have positive mental health benefits, and the study team was interested in seeing if it could be linked to decreased rates of postpartum depression (PPD). They developed an intervention that used a behavioral economics framework, and included a Nature Coach, nudges sent digitally, and feedback on goals. While they did not find an association with scores related to PPD, the team did find that women who completed the intervention had three times as many nature visits as those in the control group.
Additional CECPR members involved in this project are Kehinde Oyekanmi, Dave Buckler, and Max Jordan Nguemeni Tiako. Read more here.