Social prescribing and green prescriptions
With 1 in 4 people in the UK experiencing a mental health problem each year, people need support more than ever before to help reduce stress and anxiety in their daily lives. Noticing the great things in nature around you everyday can boost your mental wellbeing and make you feel more connected to your surroundings.
Access to nature is not equitable. People in deprived areas and under-served communities have less access to green spaces and the health benefits they bring. It is time to advertise, promote and prescribe nature’s benefits to everyone.
We have created the world's first deeply engaging smartphone 'green prescription' that brings together walking, wellbeing and enhanced nature connectedness that can be done from inside and outside of the home. This is available as a tool for social prescribing or community and self-referral, supporting in-person activities in your local area.
Using digital tools to encourage a deep connection to nature will lead to improved societal mental health and a more resilient population able to navigate what daily life can bring.
Our Nature Connectedness features
Green routes and Amble Anywhere™
Our public beta of Green routes for you was launched in 2020 followed by Amble Anywhere™ in 2023.
Our dynamic walking map intelligently creates hyper-local nature-filled walking routes from wherever you are using a mixture of open data, healthy streets and tranquil city indexes via our green routing algorithm.
These unique routes inspire people with pleasant, green walking routes straight from their door whether they’re looking for a 15 minute stroll or a 2 hour dose of nature.
Amble Anywhere™ provides a collection of circular walks that are magically created at the touch of a button. Want more walks near you? Just refresh the list and go.
Supported by a grant from Innovate UK and funding from Sport England and the National Lottery.
Social Prescribing Routes
As partners on Active Travel and Social Prescribing Pilots, we’ve created nature-rich walking routes from GP surgeries, community hubs and public transport stops. Curated routes have been designed with the communities to provide a suitable level of difficulty and challenge for a variety of patients and clients. These partnership walks can be used by GPs and social prescribers as well as the general public in those locations, all free to end users.
Social Prescribing Walking Challenges
Use our ever popular walking challenges feature to co-brand private, social prescribing challenges that can be used by GPs and social prescribers. Support patients and clients to meet activity goals through setting walking steps, time or distance targets to feel healthier and happier. We provide GDPR compliant data on behaviour change along the way and all challenges are free to end users.
Nature Notes
In May 2020, we launched Nature Notes on the iOS app in partnership with the Nature Connectedness Research Group at the University of Derby.
Professor Miles Richardson, the group lead, commenting on their research stated “one of the key findings is that nature connectedness is about moments - not minutes. Reaping the mental health benefits of the outdoors is unrelated to how much time we spend in nature; it’s about being tuned in and having a close relationship with nature.”
The feature has shown that noting down the good things you see in nature can bring about clinically significant improvements in mental health.
Users of the app have reported a 35% increase in their levels of nature connectedness - with an associated reduction in depression and anxiety - after 1 month of use.
Anna Hart, Travel Writer in The Telegraph says “I’ve been using the Nature Notes function…and it’s rapidly become one of my most cherished daily rituals.”
Get Involved!
Want to support more people to connect with nature? Whether you work in healthcare, for a charity or you’re an organisation who wants to better support the mental health of your employees, contact us for an app demo today.
