RECETAS Survey Results Write-Up

As part of RECETAS Work Package 2, Visible Network Labs (VNL) conducted an organizational social network analysis in collaboration with each of the six project sites: Helsinki, Melbourne, Cuenca, Barcelona, Marseille and Prague. In October and November 2021, 253 organizations across five of the cities were invited to participate in a Social Network Analysis of their current organizational partnerships around addressing mental health, well-being, and loneliness. Of these, 160 organizations responded to the survey, for a 63% response rate. In addition, another Social Network Analysis was carried out in Marseille, France using a different survey distribution method. Below outlines some takeaways from the surveys.

Nature-based Solutions Used

The most used solutions by respondent organizations include green space (47%), outdoor recreation (45%), and nature walks and/or cycling (39%).

Programs to Address Mental Health, Wellbeing & Loneliness

The types of programs or services that the most organizations engage in across each project site include education, training, or professional development (45%), expertise, knowledge-sharing, or consulting (37%), and direct social services or health care (36%).

Familiarity of Nature-based Social Prescribing and Solutions

As many as 46% of respondents indicated they are either “somewhat” or “very” aware of the term “nature-based social prescribing.” Helsinki leads in awareness (71% somewhat or very aware), followed by Melbourne (65%), and Barcelona (62%). While Cuenca comes in lower (44%), this value is noteworthy as it is entirely made up of “very aware” respondents.

Adoption of Nature-based Social Prescribing and Solutions

Barcelona reflects the average belief across all sites in terms of whether nature-based solutions are being adopted to address mental health, well-being, or loneliness, with a roughly 30-70 split (29% either “a great deal” or “a fair amount”, 72% either “a small amount” or “not at all”). Prague shows the most optimism (67% positive responses).

Impact of COVID-19

Most respondents believe that the COVID-19 pandemic increased public awareness of the problem of mental health, well-being, and loneliness. Respondents are evenly split on how the pandemic affected funding, and many were uncertain on how it affected the number of people receiving services and treatment (46%).

The RECETAS project will use these survey data to better understand how stakeholders across the six cities are working to address mental health, well-being, and loneliness through social prescribing and nature-based activities with the ultimate goal to systematically improve mental health and well-being, reduce loneliness, promote vibrant socially-connected communities, contribute to the sustainability of cities, and reduce health inequities by connecting diverse populations to nature in meaningful ways.

To view the rest of the results please visit this link.

RECETAS Survey Methods Write-Up

As part of RECETAS Work Package 2, Visible Network Labs (VNL) conducted an organizational social network analysis in collaboration with each of the six project sites: Helsinki, Melbourne, Cuenca, Barcelona, Marseille and Prague. VNL is a social enterprise committed to helping people, organizations, and communities use network science to increase their capacity to make a positive difference in the world. The goal of the social network analysis was to better understand how stakeholders at each of the project sites are currently working to address mental health, well-being, through social prescribing and nature-based activities.

The first step of this process was designing the survey. The VNL Project Team drafted a survey that included questions ranging from which populations the stakeholder organizations serve to the extent to which they are familiar with the term “nature-based social prescribing”. A unique component of the survey is that respondents are asked to share which organizations with whom they currently have a working relationship around addressing mental health, well-being and loneliness. In subsequent questions they are then asked to describe their relationship with each of the partners they identified.

Once the survey was finalized, it was shared with all project site team leads to be translated for those sites where English is not the native or preferred language. The project sites were also encouraged to make any language changes to the survey to ensure that it is culturally sensitive and competent to their city’s context. In partnership with VNL, each project site created a list of stakeholder organizations in their city in the mental health, well-being, social prescribing, and nature-based activities space that they believed would be important to take the survey.

All project site stakeholder organizations were sent the survey using VNL’s PARTNER platform (www.partnertool.net), with the exception of the Marseille project site, which distributed their survey in a different manner that was most appropriate for their context. Within each of the survey email invitations was a link to a RECETAS infographic for more information about the project. The launch of each survey varied by project site, with various country holidays taken into consideration. The Helsinki, Cuenca, Barcelona, and Melbourne surveys launched in October of 2021 and the Marseille survey launched in November of 2021. The VNL team will begin their analyses of the data once all surveys have closed, and will create a network map for each site that displays the connections and partnerships among organizational stakeholders. Each project site will also be given a custom Highlights Report of their city’s data curated by Visible Network Labs. The RECETAS project will use this PARTNER data to better understand how stakeholders across these different sites are working to address mental health, well-being, and loneliness through social prescribing and nature-based activities. This data will also be used to help inform the community building and intervention work of upcoming work packages that are part of the RECETAS research project.