L’article BARCELONA – Global Summit of Science, Nature and Health – Diputació de Barcelona – Forest Therapy Hub est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

RECETAS Coordinator Prof. Jill Litt took the spotlight to introduce the Friends in Nature intervention model, showcasing how the project is helping reimagine health systems to align with community-led strategies—connecting citizens through nature to combat loneliness.

A meaningful event—demonstrating Barcelona’s leadership in shaping healthier, more inclusive, and nature-connected cities.

Six inspiring speakers presented on the relationship between place and well-being, innovative strategies for implementation of greenspaces in the urban context and advances in adoptin socialprescribing practices in the local government.

Thank you to the Conscious Barcelona team Luciana Brarda and Ebru Baykal Uluoz for facilitating this important discussion which demonstrates the exciting steps that different sectors in Barcelona are taking to harmonize the goal of fostering nature in our cities to improve the health and wellbeing of its citizens.

L’article BARCELONA – Conscious Cities Design Festival « Spaces that Move (Us): Fostering Physical, Emotional, & Social Engagement in Public Spaces » est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

Today, March 20, 2025, is Social Prescribing Day. But what is Social Prescribing?

Social Prescribing is a method consisting of connecting people to non-medical support to address issues like loneliness, stress or isolation, topics that we target a lot with RECETAS.

Some countries like the United Kingdom have specific professionals to do this, Social Prescribing Link Workers, but it is really about helping people in need of help to access connection. For example, you can help an isolated loved one by making them join a community gardening group! Which is actually something that we can do with RECETAS : it is good for your health, check it out –> The scientific reasons you should resolve to start gardening.

RECETAS is a Horizon 2020 funded project that aims to connect people together within a setting of nature to help alleviate their loneliness. We are working with 6 different pilot cities, Barcelona, Helsinki, Prague, Cuenca, Marseille and Melbourne, to show how beneficial nature-based social prescribing can be.

As we are embarking on our fifth year of work, we would love to keep you updated on this fascinating journey!

Click here to subscribe to our newsletter (the next one is coming soon!), and make sure to follow us on LinkedIn!

Social Prescribing Day is organized by the National Academy for Social Prescribing, check out their website!

L’article Social Prescribing Day est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

More than ever, the links between biodiversity and health are at the forefront of current affairs, and the health benefits of contact with nature are widely recognized.

RECETAS is partnering with Biodiversanté to organize a movie/debate night around the documentary « Vive les microbes ! » (Long live germs) by investigative journalist and director Marie-Monique Robin, in order to explore the links between biodiversity, human health and chronic diseases.

With a presentation of RECETAS Marseille-based on the project and its methodology, which have been rewarded during the « Hippocrate’s Gardens Trophies » organized by biodiversanté. The organisation Biodiversanté offers practical solutions for integrating biodiversity into the CSR strategies of healthcare institutions.

The event featured the documentary and book “Vive les microbes!” by Marie-Monique Robin, offering an exploration of the deep connections between biodiversity and human health.

Watch the full documentary “Vive les microbes” on Arte.tv

L’article MARSEILLE – movie/debate night around the documentary « Long live germs » with journalist Marie-Monique Robin est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

Adapted from the Friends in nature intervention developed within the RECETAS project, CRONISOL was specifically piloted to reduce loneliness among individuals living with chronic pain and chronic mental disorders.

L’article BARCELONA – Presentations in Front of Health and Social Departments of Catalonia est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

L’article Striving to Connect est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

This article from L’Express, a recognized French newspaper, explores how loneliness became a top priority topic during these past few years, both for the public and the decision makers.

Individuals’ initiatives

People are feeling the impact of loneliness on their lives. Patrick Bernard, 64, is a local figure who is combatting loneliness on a daily basis. He created a local non-profit, called the Hyperneighbours’ Republic, and through it, built step by step new connections with people in his area. From diners to waste sorting sessions, his initiative have been takled about in numerous newspapers including the New York Times, and is replicated in the United States, in Spain and in Italy.

The Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic was a pivotal moment for the action and research around loneliness, as the awareness on this matter really rose during that time, to the point that the European Commission decided to have loneliness as one its main priorities in 2023. In France, the struggle remains: more than 11 million people regularly feel alone in the country, even now that social distanciation rules are out of effect. Many people involved in the fight against loneliness would like France to create its own Ministry of Solitude, like in Japan, or the United Kingdom at some point. The idea behind it is to carry the challenges stemming from loneliness to the decision makers’ level. At the moment, France has a strategic committee on loneliness but it only focuses on older adults, even though the most represented group in polls on loneliness is the young adults, alongside people coming from minority groups or a migrand background.

Physical health issues

The research on the physical effects of loneliness is an important factor of awareness. Julianne Holt-Lunstad demonstrated that loneliness has en effect comparable to the act of smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, in a paper published in 2015 Perspectives on Psychological Science. Loneliness would even expose people to a mortality increased by 32% according to a paper published during the same year in Nature Human Behaviour.

Relational reeducation

RECETAS finds answers to the mysteries and challenges by acknowledging isolated people’s need to make new connections but also their incapacity to do so. By using nature-based social prescriptions, RECETAS creates a form of protocols of social reeducation, An important element that emerged from this is that one well-trained person can generate the necessary drive for people to meaningfully meet up. In the United Kingdom, a job is even born from this observation: the link workers.

Click here to find out more about the article, our work regarding alleviating loneliness and the other initiatives going in that direction.

L’article RECETAS featured in French newspaper: L’Express est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

What if we adopted the 3-30-300 rule imagined by Dutch urbanist Cecil Konijnendijk? Every citizen should be able to see at least three trees from their home, live in an area with at least 30% of green surface, and be less than 300 meters away from a green space.

This recent article from French newspaper Le Monde revisits evidence that nature benefits one’s physical and mental health. In 2018, a british study evaluated the links between the prevalence of depression symptoms and access to green spaces. The study followed 94 879 adults from age 37 to 79. The result was that adults living in the greener area had a risk of suffering from depression reduced by 13% compared to those living in a less green area.

According to Mathilde Pascal, from Santé Publique France (Public Health France), if cities implemented in every neighbourhood as much green spaces that there are in their greenest areas, mortality would drop by 3 to 7%.

RECETAS is highlighted in this article, especially our Marseille-based research team, and their work focusing on economically vulnerable adults, often subjected to stigmatization. With RECETAS, they participate every week to group activities in nature : walks in the Calanques, plant gathering, visits of the Frioul island, gardening, etc. « We can already see a reduction of stress and anxiety among participants. »

L’article RECETAS featured in French newspaper Le Monde est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

The importance of nature of one’s health:

Interactions with nature, such as forest bathing, have been shown to improve both one’s mental and physical health : ‘lower blood pressure, a stabilised nervous system, fewer stress hormones, boosted immune function, and reduced anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue’, the list of benefits is long, the results pointing in that direction are numerous.

From 2019… To now:
In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the RECETAS project started by taking this knowledge into account, with the intention of researching what would happened if it was combined to social connection in a group.

Now in its fourth year, RECETAS is currently running trials in our six pilots cities, advocating in favor of nature-based social prescriptions as a way to efficiently alleviate loneliness. The nature-based social prescriptions menus are co-created with participants to respect their desires, accordingly to local contexts.

Focus on one of our pilot cities: Melbourne
Nature helps us focus on the present but also has the capacity to help us remembering what is bright from our past, providing a sense of home when needed. This is particularly powerful in settings such as the one of our Melbourne pilot, where RECETAS researchers work LGBTI asylum seekers.

One of RECETAS participants spoke to Julia Hotz and said: « When the group was ending, I realised how much I was going to miss that routine of seeing the same people each week, just spending some time in nature, and feeling that sense of belonging […] It kind of killed my loneliness. »

L’article RECETAS featured in a BBC article! est apparu en premier sur Recetas.

Marseille’s University Hospitals (APHM (Assistance Publique – Hopitaux de Marseille) proudly received the Hippocrate’s Gardens Trophy in the regional category for South of France (Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region). A reward for their innovative action-research approach, addressing a timely and critical issue: social isolation and the healing power of nature.

Check out our LinkedIn post on Biodiversanté’s Hippocrate’s Garden by clicking here!

L’article Hippocrate’s Gardens Trophies: our team in Marseille wins a Regional Award! est apparu en premier sur Recetas.