The Impact of Children’s Connection to Nature: A Report for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)

Connecting with nature should be part of every child’s life as it has the potential to aid nature’s revival while benefiting the child. To embed nature connection within our social norms, there is a need to be able to understand the benefits and set targets for levels of nature connection. This report presents findings on the impact of connection to nature from a survey of 775 children, using the child as the unit of analysis, rather than aggregated data. The results demonstrated that children who were more connected to nature had significantly higher English attainment, although this wasn’t repeated for Mathematics. Further, the 1.5 Connection to Nature Index (CNI) level was found to be a significant threshold across other measures, with those children with a CNI of 1.5 or above having significantly higher health, life satisfaction, pro-environmental behaviours and pro-nature behaviours. The analysis found strong correlations between CNI and pro-nature behaviours and pro-environmental behavior. A positive correlation was also evident between CNI and days spent outdoors and days spent in nature over the past week, suggesting that the more time spent in nature is associated with child’s connection to nature. Finally, weak correlations were found between connection to nature, health and life satisfaction. When more refined attainment results for English were explored, (n = 512) further weak correlations were found between English attainment and attendance, English and life satisfaction, and between English attainment and connection to nature. There are a multitude of factors associated with a child’s English attainment, so, although the correlations are weak, it is noteworthy that connection to nature is as important to children’s achievement in English as life satisfaction and attendance at school

Nature Connections 2016 conference report: Implications for research and practice

Natural England, The Wildlife Trusts, The National Trust, Historic England, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

Obesity in post menopausal women with a family history of breast cancer: prevalence and risk awareness

Background: Obesity and physical activity are modifiable risk factors in the development of postmenopausal breast cancer. The aim of this study was to assess the level of awareness and prevalence of these factors in women attending family history clinics. Methods: Women attending the breast cancer family history clinic from 2004 to 2006 completed a questionnaire (SP15 format) about their knowledge of and exposure to various diet and lifestyle factors. All women had been counselled by a Consultant Cancer Geneticist and were given verbal and written information on the effect of life style on breast cancer risk. Responses were analysed using SPSS™ software. Results: The response rate was 70% and two thirds of women were post-menopausal. The prevalence of obesity in post-menopausal women was 37% with 40% being overweight. The majority of women consumed a healthy balanced diet. Only 15% of post-menopausal women exercised for more than 4 hours per week. Two-thirds of women correctly stated that obesity increases their breast cancer risk and 73% of these were overweight or obese. Over 87% were correctly aware of the role of family history, 68% of a high fat diet, and 57% of hormone replacement therapy in the development of breast cancer. Conclusion: Women attending family history clinics lead a high risk lifestyle for the development of breast cancer with high prevalence of obesity and low levels of physical activity. A campaign of patient education is needed to promote healthy lifestyle choices, especially physical activity, in these high-risk women

The Impact of Poor Health Behaviors on Workforce Disability

The effects of poor health habits on mortality have been studied extensively. However, few studies have examined the impact of these health behaviors on workforce disability. In the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative cohort of 6044 Americans who were between the ages of 51 and 61 and who were working in 1992, we found that both baseline smoking status and a sedentary lifestyle predict workforce disability six years later. If this relationship is causal, cost-benefit analyses of health behavior intervention that neglect workforce disability may substantially underestimate the benefits of such interventions.