摘要：There is mounting concern for the health of urban populations as cities expand at an unprecedented rate. Urban green spaces provide settings for a remarkable range of physical and mental health benefits, and pioneering health policy is recognizing nature as a cost-effective tool for planning healthy cities. Despite this, limited information on how specific elements of nature deliver health outcomes restricts its use for enhancing population health. We articulate a framework for identifying direct and indirect causal pathways through which nature delivers health benefits, and highlight current evidence. We see a need for a bold new research agenda founded on testing causality that transcends disciplinary boundaries between ecology and health. This will lead to cost-effective and tailored solutions that could enhance population health and reduce health inequalities. More than 70% of the world’s population will live in cities within 30 years, 1,2 igniting concern about the health challenges resulting from urbanization. 3 Effective planning of the physical fabric of our future cities is foundational for delivering enhanced and equitable health outcomes, 4 and powerful new evidence highlights the critical role that urban nature and green infrastructure can play in shaping healthy cities. However, knowledge of how natural environments benefit health remains rudimentary at best, and almost all evidence so far is correlative. 5,6 If real progress is to be made in designing health-promoting green infrastructure, ecologists and health scientists must begin working closely together to tease apart the causal mechanisms involved. 7,8 Here we outline a framework for examining causality, and identify some plausible pathways connecting the natural environment with health outcomes. We conclude that there is a need to shift attention to how, not whether, nature influences health. This new research direction will provide the foundation for strategies that will shape urban nature to deliver better health outcomes for communities, and ultimately could assist in reducing health inequalities.
