Outdoor Education News

People in the US are spending less time outdoors, according to a new 2019 Outdoor Foundation study, with children participating in 15 percent fewer outdoor activities in 2018 than they did six years before. The study found that nearly half of the U.S. population does not participate in any outdoor recreation, with only 17.9 percent heading ….  Read More

Two million trees may be planted in UK cities and towns under a new development and planning framework that calls for a ‘fast track for beauty.’ An independent commission set up to advise the UK government on how to promote and increase the use of high-quality design for new homes and neighborhoods made the recommendation ….  Read More

A research team recently looked at the needs of apartment-dwelling families in Australia, finding that such families have an even greater need for local nature due to limited and confining space within apartment complexes. The researchers point out that, as the number of families living in apartments continues to increase, apartment housing is not meeting ….  Read More

A new draft report from the Oregon Governor’s Task Force on the Outdoors recommends efforts to reach out to minority groups about outdoor recreation and make state parks more accessible to people with disabilities. To encourage more diversity, the report proposes minority communities should have a hand in land management planning as well as hiring ….  Read More

Over the last five years, Utah’s Outdoor Recreation Grant program has invested approximately $10 million into 155 projects across the state, dedicating even more resources toward the program. Created to help communities around the state fund outdoor recreation infrastructure to help drive tourism, the program has funded the construction of new hiking and mountain biking ….  Read More

A massive decline in mainly urban playgrounds across the UK has urged the the Association of Play Industries (API) to warn the country’s political leaders that they must take measures to reverse with the ‘inactivity crisis’ among children. API representatives say the massive decline in public playgrounds is a public health issue and that, unless ….  Read More

More than 160,000 people could die over the next decade from strokes and heart attacks caused by air pollution warns the British Heart Foundation (BHF). While there are an estimated 11,000 deaths per year at the moment, BHF cautions that this number will rise as the population continues to age and wants the UK to ….  Read More

A study published in the journal Climate examines the link between historical housing policies to exposure to current deadly heatwaves. The study finds that deadly urban heatwaves disproportionately affect underserved neighborhoods because of the legacy of racist housing policies that have denied African Americans homeownership and basic public services. Each year, more than 600 Americans die ….  Read More

A new report on the impact of road traffic accidents involving children reports that such accidents are a grave public health issue facing developing countries. The report from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) highlights the impact that traffic incidents with victims aged 0 to 17 have on a country’s economy and ….  Read More

For its first round of No Child Left Inside grants, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources received an overwhelming response to its call for grant proposals. Program administrators received 200 applications in just six minutes from schools, nonprofits and community organizations. The majority of projects were focused on trying to conduct classes outside, at their school. ….  Read More

As the number of people with myopia, or short-sightedness, has increased dramatically in recent years in various regions of the world, the risk of blindness with worsening severity of myopia has made the condition a major public health concern. While many studies have looked at possible risk factors, only a few factors have come out consistently around the ….  Read More

In a study published in the Journal of Urban Landscape and Planning, Australian researchers found that having a playground nearby can add value to property. The presence of a playground added about 4.6 percent to the average property price. Researchers used ten years of property price history in a specific region of Australia to try to ….  Read More

Researchers from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland found that children living in metropolitan areas have weaker motor skills compared with children living in the countryside. Study results also showed that children from the countryside spent more time outdoors, while children from the metropolitan area most frequently engaged in organized sports.

An international health research centre which looked at city children’s habits found that watching television is the lifestyle habit ‘most strongly associated’ with obesity in children. Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) studied 1,480 children, looking at five lifestyle habits: physical activity, sleep time, television time, plant-based food consumption and ultra-processed food ….  Read More

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Foundation and the national nonprofit KidsGardening opened its Gro More Good Grassroots Grants, an annual grant program designed to get more kids outside through the development of youth-based garden and greenspace programs. The Gro More Good Grassroots Grants will support all types of community-driven garden and greenspace projects that directly engage youth. Grant funding will ….  Read More

A study examining the relationship between exposure to a household pet cat or dog during the first 12 years of life and having a subsequent diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder found that exposure to a household pet dog was associated with a significantly decreased hazard of having a subsequent diagnosis of schizophrenia. The researchers ….  Read More