“ We need to get to a point where outdoor experiences are not considered a luxury reserved for a few, but rather something that each of us needs and deserves.”
mine where trees will go, and the program trains them in pruning and other long-term care.“ One of my favorite things about these tree plantings is that I get to meet community members of Providence that I probably wouldn’ t have met otherwise,” Wainwright says.
Before beginning medical school in Maine last year, Angelique Onorati was a Rhode Island volunteer for Park Rx America. The organization encourages people to get outside by, among other things, writing prescriptions that include place, duration, and frequency of the nature“ dose.”“ I guess the most equivalent would be a pharmaceutical representative,” Onorati says of her role with PRA.“‘ We’ d love for you to start using this drug’— but in this case, nature is the pharmaceutical agent.”
According to Robert Zarr, MD, MPH, founder of Park Rx America, about 1,800 providers use PRA’ s free platform to write prescriptions with their patients to set achievable goals.“ It’ s quite different than a medication prescription,” says Zarr, a pediatrician in Ottawa.“ We don’ t usually ask patients, how often do you want to take it? So that’ s a big, big difference, is that it’ s co-produced, and … it’ s an opportunity for the patient to really give their input.”
PRA also partners with nonprofits and physician groups to offer forest bathing and other immersive experiences, as well as indoor enhancements like nature photographs and houseplants. Onorati provided these interventions to staff at Thrive Behavioral Health in Warwick and a restorative justice organization in Boston— both groups that face serious mental health challenges in their work and may, with time, reap the benefits of nature exposure.
On a Zoom call from Boston, Armand Coleman, executive director of the Transformational Prison Project, holds up the plant that Onorati gave him.“ It’ s still alive and kicking,” he laughs.
Coleman, who grew up in Queens, NY, was sentenced to life in prison in Massachusetts at age 17. He was at MCI- Norfolk when he cofounded TPP to help incarcerated men address their own accountability as well as their trauma; it eventually expanded to five other state prisons. After Coleman had served 28 years, life sentences for people under 18 were ruled unconstitutional and he was released in 2019.
Now on the outside, Coleman continues to work on restorative justice in institutions and communities, while also providing wellness programming to formerly incarcerated individuals, including his own staff. Onorati connected TPP with a certified forest therapy guide who leads them on walks in Arnold Arboretum in Boston. For those who were incarcerated as children, it may be their first nature exposure.
“ You are dealing with a demographic that have had no interaction with nature their entire lives. And not only have they not had any interaction with nature their entire life, they were put in the most unnatural environment,” Coleman says.“ If you’ re subjected to long-term sensory deprivation, which children are when they come in, it can have a longterm effect.”
TPP offers nature programming to at-risk youth and formerly incarcerated children, including fishing and kayaking. While for some people, the benefits of immersion in nature may seem subtle and nonspecific, Coleman says for“ people who’ ve never been outside ever, it is immediate and it is extreme.” He recalls that when sciatica left him bedridden, one of the people who trained him in restorative justice took him to California for a week of forest bathing in the redwoods.“ I’ d never been in a forest,” he says.“ I was overwhelmed. And I cried.”
Coleman recovered from his sciatica, and continued to get better. To this day he goes for regular barefoot walks in Boston’ s parks.“ I literally feel it working on me,” he says.
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