The European Centre for Environment and Human Health, together with colleagues from the University of Exeter’s Behavioural Sciences Research Group, will lead a work package for a new €7m research project on nature-based therapies.

RESONATE (Building individual and community RESilience thrOugh NATurEbased therapies) is a four-year research and innovation project funded by Horizon Europe examining the health, environmental, economic and social impacts of so-called ‘green care’, ‘nature-based social prescribing’ or ‘Nature-based Therapy (NbT)’ interventions.

The project includes 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 goal is to provide practical guidelines and tools for NbT implementation and is expected to have a significant impact on the future development and use of NbTs in health and social care across Europe. RESONATE is co-ordinated by Dr Mathew White at the University of Vienna, Austria.

Professor Ben Wheeler and Dr Lewis Elliott will lead Exeter’s contributions to this project which will include the analysis of two cohort studies including the PROTECT cohort led by the University of Exeter, together with a work package on process evaluation – investigating the processes by, and contexts within, which nature-based therapy does (and does not) work for certain people.