Tackling Loneliness through nature-based solutions: at RECETAS, we take #RandomActsofConnection outside

From June 10 to 16, we celebrate Loneliness Awareness Week, which aims at raising awareness about loneliness and its impact on mental health and wellbeing. This annual campaign is organized by the Marmalade Trust, a UK-based charity whose goal is to tackle loneliness and social isolation.

The RECETAS project is happy to support the Marmalade Trust as our actions and research fully aligns with the spirit of Loneliness Awareness Week. Thanks to this initiative, people get to talk about these issues, participating in reducing the stigma associated with feeling lonely, encouraging others to talk about it and connecting us together. The RECETAS Project indeed studies the connections between loneliness and activities done within nature in urban and peri-urban areas, with six pilot cities in which this activities are carried out and tested.

Throughout Loneliness Awareness Week, diverse activities are organized to promote the message that everyone can feel lonely, because of a variety of different factors, and that breaking out of the vicious circle of silence is crucial.

Each year, Loneliness Awareness Week features a specific theme. This year, the focus is on Random Acts of Connection. The idea is simple: encouraging people to increase the everyday moments of connection that make us feel better and less lonely. These connections can take many forms: having coffee breaks with co-workers, hosting a street party, chatting with someone in a queue, or simply calling a friend to catch up….

Our methodology, the “Friends in Nature” methodology, is an extension of the Finnish “Circle of Frends methodology”, and aims at reducing loneliness through nature-based activities in groups (gardening, species observation, walking in forests, etc).

The end goal of the project is to provide tangible scientific data on the matter but also to raise awareness among policy makers in order to influence policies in urban planning, environment, social issues and mental health in the right direction.

RECETAS is a project funded by the Horizon 2020 program.
To find more information on the RECETAS project, check our website: https://www.recetasproject.eu/
To learn more about Loneliness Awareness Week and the Marmalade Trust, and to get involved: https://www.lonelinessawarenessweek.org/about
#RandomActsOfConnection

RECETAS featured in HaDEA’s new article: « European Mental Health Awareness Week: Horizon 2020 promotes natural spaces in cities to combat loneliness »

In light of #EuropeanMentalHealthWeek , RECETAS has been featured in an article by the European Health and Digital Executive Agency!

Find out more about addressing loneliness through nature-based solutions with details about our pilot sites, fundings, our methodology, etc.

👉 Read the article!

Your 2024 resolution should be to seek nature spots in your city

The power of nature and social connections is the subject of an article in Horizon magazine, which uses RECETAS as good practice!

RECETAS and GoGreenRoutes, another project funded by the European Union’s H2020 programme, aim at studying these links between mental health and nature, and at providing adequate solutions.

• The RECETAS Project is testing a method of nature-based social prescribing on voluntary groups of people to evaluate the benefits on mental health and alleviate loneliness
• The GoGreenRoutes project is implementing nature-based solutions (green corridors, walkways, etc) to enhance the physical and mental health of urban residents.

• In Prague, where the RECETAS Project formed a group that has been helpful to people going through tough times.
• In Lahti, where a forest walkway has been built to bring the benefits of nature to workers, patients and visitors.

–> Find out more: https://projects.research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/en/horizon-magazine/health-powers-birdsong-breezes-and-bushes

The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Alexandre, can you briefly introduce yourself and the purpose of the organization you work for?

I am a social health psychologist by training, and I hold a position as a hospital engineer in the Medical Evaluation Department (headed by Pr. Stéphanie Gentile), in the Public Health Unit at the Assistance Publique Hôpitaux de Marseille. With 4 hospitals and 3400 beds, the Marseille Public University Hospital System is the largest health establishment in the Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur region in France. The AP-HM is one of the most dynamic French structures in terms of research. Within our department, we are a multidisciplinary team that carries out numerous hospital missions (Quality and Safety of Care, Evaluation of Professional Practices, Certification, Patient Experience, Perinatal Care, Patient Therapeutic Education), as well as numerous teaching and training activities (Master’s degree supervisors, continuing education of nursing staff, training of doctors), and we develop innovative research projects in and outside the hospital with disadvantaged populations.
I am also a doctor in Social Psychology (EA 849, Aix-Marseille University). My thesis is entitled « Psychosocial processes and issues associated with the development of empowerment: Investigation and intervention in the context of precariousness in France in the field of health promotion ». The thesis is based on several evaluations of interventions aimed at reducing social inequalities in health that we have carried out in Marseille.
With Pr. Stéphanie Gentile and Lucie Cattaneo, an other social health psychologist in charge of the RECETAS project in Marseille, and with the support of AVITEM , we were able to investigate a new intervention and research theme: Nature-based Social Prescribing (NbSP).

🎤 What are you interested in as researcher?

My fields of interests are many and include interventions aimed at reducing social inequalities in health, community health and the development of empowerment in the context of precariousness, the development of psychosocial skills in young children and in therapeutic education, the transfer of knowledge in prevention and health promotion, the organisation of innovative health pathways in the city-hospital link, and access to care for precarious and homeless people.
In recent years, we have been working, for example, to evaluate the functioning and effects of an emotional and social development programme for children in schools (another thesis has also been completed), we have been recording the number of homeless people in Marseille, we have carried out action research to build and model a health pathway for people living with HIV and in precarious situations, as well as a screening tool for social and health vulnerability in paediatrics.

🎤 Can you explain to us what is Empowerment? And how loneliness impacts the empowerment?

Empowerment is a polysemous concept that was developed in the United States in the 1960s as a result of the social and political movements for civil rights, women’s rights and the rights of minority communities. Empowerment was imported later in Europe and in France in the early 2000s, particularly in the field of mental health. Empowerment approaches oscillate between the development of individual capacities, a new strategy for fighting exclusion, and a process of social transformation to reduce social inequalities. In its operationalisation, empowerment is not just a set of skills to be acquired, it is a profoundly social process because it occurs in community spaces in small groups where people can develop new forms of interpersonal relationships, challenge social inequalities, experience a new relationship with the environment and move towards a process of individual and collective emancipation. Maton (2008) defines empowerment as a group-based participatory process where marginalised or oppressed individuals gain greater control over what is important to them, gain access to essential resources and basic rights, pursue important goals in their lives, and reduce their exclusion from society. For example, Wallerstein (2006) highlights the importance of developing supportive environments and health-promoting policies through the development of self-support groups, user involvement, collective action and dialogue-based approaches. Labonte (1994) has also identified five main strategies in health promotion practices that fall under the umbrella of empowerment: person-centred care, group development, community organisations, advocacy and coalition building, and political action.

The group space allows people to break out of their isolation from society, to break out of their loneliness, to develop new relationships of mutual support, to engage in collective activities, and to develop a sense of belonging. People can build hope, believe in the opportunity to redraw social links, to widen their choices and possibilities, and thus escape from an alienating condition, from the powerlessness and social isolation characteristic of situations of precariousness where people are kept in a state of dependence on services and social protection. At the level of a collective, people can then develop social power through the ability to think and act with each other. When these collectives form community organisations, they are also able to promote structural and regulatory changes that directly affect the health and well-being of people in a locality (Boyce, 2001; Cavalieri & Almeida, 2018; Wallerstein, 2006).

🎤 What is your approach to tackle this issue? What is community empowerment? What does this have to do with health?

Empowerment has a historically relational approach, in contrast to the current individualising empowerment which advocates adaptation, personal capacities and responsibility. Our empirical work, as well as that of the literature, highlights the interest of situating empowerment as a process and at the level of collectives. Empowerment develops in participatory relational spaces in which people can develop a collective consciousness and civic engagement, they recognise situations of inequality and stigmatisation, as well as the opportunities and resources existing in the environment. Empowerment is developed in safe and trusting relational spaces where people can share their common and priority concerns. They provide mutual support, develop leadership, new partnerships and opportunities. Empowerment requires the creation of professional and organisational cultures that are conducive to its development, and to build on these collectives to act at the political and structural level by acting on different social determinants of people’s health and well-being, and by challenging the norms and beliefs that perpetuate social inequalities in health. Empowerment is therefore a process of social action in which people perceive new possibilities to change their living conditions and social environment (Wallerstein, 2006).

Community empowerment thus develops at the level of a collective, a group, a community, an organisation (neighbourhood associations for example, or citizen coalitions, local networks). People learn to cooperate, to develop new resources and skills that they would not have developed alone. Thanks to the dynamics of the group or community organisation, they can gradually emerge from the weight of their conditions of existence, and from an insufficient hold on events and on their life contexts. A community has an existence of its own, it can exist outside of social intervention and community empowerment is not the sum of the empowerment developed by each individual (Ninacs, 2002). Through involvement in the collective and in community organisations, people can develop a social power where they manage to change negative situations and prevent the recurrence of problems (Guttierez, 1990). Small group discussions allow people to explore the links between personal and social problems, and to develop a better understanding of the social determinants of their health. This relational and processual approach to empowerment thus contributes to resituating the space of power of citizens in their capacity to reflect, to organise themselves in community, and to act on the social determinants of their health at different levels up to the point of impelling social change at a political level.

Can you tell us more about initiatives in Marseille aiming to empower vulnerable people?

Marseille is an area where many innovative actions are being tested with socially vulnerable people. For example, the JUST association is developing several projects with people in situations of vulnerability or social exclusion to help create a fairer and more inclusive society. The « Lieu de répit » (A place of relief) is an experimental alternative project to psychiatric hospitalisation that welcomes people in a psychological crisis in a non-medical space and using the Open Dialogue approach. The association also runs the participative action « En passant par les calanques » (Passing through the creeks), which enables socially excluded people to walk in groups along several paths in the creeks of Marseille, which are veritable mountainous natural settings by the sea. Other experiments in Marseille are going on. Since 2004, in Marseille, the Health and Citizenship action for residents of accommodation and social reintegration centres (CHRS) has proposed a participatory approach involving various actors (CHRS teams and management, residents, external professionals) and taking the form of collective workshops with users, the « Health and Citizenship » workshops. Several professionals from the health, social and legal sectors are mobilised to work with residents on the priorities over which people wish to exercise greater control: over-indebtedness, the place of religions, how to eat a balanced diet on a small budget, experiences of discrimination. These last two actions are key partnerships in the implementation of the RECETAS project in Marseille. Since 2011, a precariousness health network has also been created and is supported by an inter-institutional technical committee to promote access to rights, access to care and continuity of care for homeless people in Marseille (projetassab.org). More recently, since 2021, the association La PASS de ville, awarded the Health Innovation Award, aims to fight against the renunciation of care by the most disadvantaged by removing the administrative, linguistic and financial barriers that exclude them from care. Finally, in 2017, we actively participated in a regional inter-researcher dynamic to develop a guide for building, leading and piloting collective and collaborative dynamics favourable to the experimentation, perpetuation and dissemination of interventions aimed at reducing social inequalities in health.

🎤 How are you involved in the RECETAS project? What are you working on at the moment?

According to a study carried out by CREDOC for the Fondation de France in 2014, « 12.5% of French people have no social network and one in ten French people feel excluded, abandoned or useless (…), poverty remains a determining factor in solitude ». People living with less than 1000 euros (60% of the average income) per month are twice as likely to be in a situation of social isolation.

In Marseille, 200,000 people are considered poor (26%, compared to 14.6% in France ), i.e. single people living with less than 1,000 euros per month or a family with two children living on a maximum of 2,500 euros. Among the large French cities, Marseille is the one with the highest concentration of poverty . 5 of the 16 Marseilles districts (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 14th and 15the ) are among the 20 worst off, with poverty rates exceeding 39%. Of the 100 poorest neighbourhoods in France, 25 are in Marseille.

However, the survey carried out by AVITEM and VNL in 2021 identified a total of 392 organisations in Marseille working on loneliness, mental health and well-being, which shows that there is a real local dynamic to tackle social inequalities. Several of them were able to join the RECETAS project and expressed the interest of working on accessibility to nature for these most disadvantaged populations. Following numerous interviews and workshops with professionals from these organisations, it was proposed to develop a double strategy centred on access to outdoor activities, but also on the development of nature in the city, as close as possible to the living environment of isolated individuals and families. At the same time, we carried out participatory observations within collectives or social structures (such as mutual aid groups, or within social residences ) as well as workshops with the public on the themes of food, nature, work, and inspiring women. We have continued this immersion work by relying on the relationships of trust created with users and professionals to formalise the different groups that will be able to participate in outdoor and/or nature-related activities (gardening, walks, discovery of new activities at sea, around an urban farm or relaxation). Through a relational approach to empowerment, we offer participants the possibility to get out of their neighbourhoods, to progressively engage in new activities adapted to their possibilities, to propose activities that are graduated in terms of physical effort, to take up challenges in groups, to open up the activities to families, to favour the free and sustainable nature of the activities, to think about the relationship with nature in an urban environment, to reflect on the necessary changes around nature on the territory to allow for the improvement of the well-being of all the city dwellers of Marseilles

 Dr Nerkez Opacin, Research Fellow, RMIT University

The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Nerkez, can you briefly introduce yourself and the purpose of the organization you work for?

I am a Post-doc Research Fellow at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at the RMIT University. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to investigate the nature-based activities in social prescribing in Melbourne, Australia, with such socially minded and engaged scholars as Professor Sarah Bekessy, Professor Katherine Johnson, and Dr Nicholas Hill. Community-engaged research is something I’m interested in conducting and diversifying. I have over 9 years of experience in the fields of program development, social research, project evaluation and higher education. My work intersects the fields of global studies, social anthropology and peacebuilding. I use a variety of qualitative research- and quantitative data analysis techniques, including interview and observation-based methods, working with focus groups, participatory action research, as well as multi-sited ethnography in close collaboration with local communities and the civil society sector to create research findings that can be employed to guide practice, programme design, and policy.

The School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University is a community of globally involved, interdisciplinary and socially concerned scholars. Through action-driven teaching and applied research, they are directly involved in contemporary challenges our societies face concerning globalisation, sustainability, language, crime and social care. The School has strong industry connections while maintaining strong links to professionally recognised bodies in aiming to contribute to science and broaden the knowledge of students equipping them well for future careers.

🎤 With which public do you work in the RECETAS project? How do you approach working with vulnerable group of people in your research?

We are collaborating with individuals who identify as LGBTQIA+ refugees or asylum seekers for the RECETAS project here in Melbourne. Working with this specific cohort presents a number of difficulties, and our work is directly related to community involvement. For that reason, our main partner in this project is Many Coloured Sky which is an organisation that actively supports LGBTQI+ organisations with capacity building, planning and project development, and empowers those at the margins and intersections of LGBTQI+ communities to participate fully and equally.

Before joining the RECETAS Melbourne team I have been working, researching and evaluating grassroots interventions in post-conflict communities. This work entailed close work with people who experienced primary or secondary trauma and/or had other challenges in dealing with violent war-related pasts. I feel this has equipped me well in continuing my work with vulnerable groups of people here in Melbourne as well.

🎤 Can you tell us more about participatory and ethnographic research methods?

As a holistic qualitative method, ethnography is mainly descriptive. In addition to participant observation, it also includes a variety of data collection strategies from structured interviews, field notes, audio recordings, and surveys to “hanging around the corner” for a longer period of time. What I really like about this particular method is that ethnography can help identify and analyse unexpected issues. For example, when conducting different studies that are not based on in-situ observation, sometimes it can be easy to miss some unexpected occurrences. The reason for that can be as simple as not including a question in the survey or the participants not mentioning something.

Participatory research is another exciting method because it directly requires active collaboration with those affected by an issue that is studied for the intent to take action or implement change. As much as it is exciting it is also challenging as working with the community entails many unpredictable scenarios that require the

🎤 Can you tell us more about photo-elicitation as a method that will be used during your research on the RECETAS project in Melbourne?

One of the greatest parts about our Melbourne-based research team is that we have a variety of research backgrounds, which allows for the exploration of unique research approaches. Professor Katherine Johnson has a long history of being a remarkable researcher using photo-elicitation and photo-voice techniques. Her prior work in this area has greatly improved our methods as well.

While using this particular research method we hope to gain information that is otherwise difficult to reach through other forms. Furthermore, we aim to empower and give agency to other research participants and to enable the research findings to reach a wider audience that relies more on visual forms of information. Essentially, this will look like this in the field: throughout the course of the study, each participant will be instructed to shoot three to four images of nature per nature activity. These images will be utilised in our exhibitions, one-on-one interviews, and reflection sessions.

Through photographs and textual extracts, we hope to explore how the participants view themselves, their feelings and the world around them. Furthermore, we hope that the participants will develop ownership and achievement by becoming part of the research process.

• 28 February 2023, at 11am
  
• Online
  

The webinar – organised by the HEART project, member of the European Urban Health Cluster– will explore the impacts of urban environment on health outcomes at both collective and individual level. Panellists will address questions such as ‘How are urban policies currently designed?’, ‘Which evidence do policy-makers need to take decisions about urban planning and infrastructure?’, ‘How can we ensure universal access to blue and green spaces?’.

« In 2021, 75% of the total population of the European Union lived in urban areas. Urban areas can have both positive and negative effects on human health. Citizens living in urban areas have better access to care facilities but are also exposed to higher infrastructure density, heavier air pollution, and increased stress. Cities whose urban planning policies are steered by health priorities are obviously more advanced in disease prevention and wellbeing promotion. There is also growing evidence that blue and green spaces have beneficial and restorative effects on mental and physical health. The Covid-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of contact with blue and green spaces to reduce stress, carry out physical activity, and provide opportunities for social interaction. Expecting further increase in the urban population in the coming decades, we should reflect on what kind of urban policy design will make current and future generations thrive and if universal access to blue and green spaces in the city can help to reduce health inequalities by their positive impact on wellbeing. »

> More information & registration

Cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes remain some of the most important public health challenges worldwide. Could non-communicable and other chronic diseases be alleviated through nature-based community interventions? More specifically, can community gardening reduce these common health risks?

Our project leader, Dr. Jill Litt, has conducted the first-ever, randomized, controlled trial of community gardening to answer those questions. The results have been published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal!

> FIND IT HERE

The trial shows that participating in a community garden can improve behavioral health through diet, physical activity and reduce stress and anxiety.

A news release from University of Colorado Boulder is also available here.

☝️ This trial laid the groundwork for RECETAS!

• 7 February 2023
  
• Online
  

« The COVID-19 pandemic had a big effect on people’s social lives, as many were disconnected from family, friends, and the wider society. In this webinar we present new Nordic knowledge on the impact of the pandemic on social isolation and loneliness. We also discuss what was done to alleviate loneliness across the Nordic Region.

At the webinar we present two new publications. The aim is to shed light on the social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly to examine the experiences of social isolation and loneliness. We also present some examples of promising efforts from the Nordic countries designed to improve the wellbeing of people experiencing loneliness. »

www.nordicwelfare.org

> More information & registration

 Dr. Laura Coll-Planas, Universitat de Vic – Universitat Central de Catalunya 

The RECETAS partnership is rich in interdisciplinarity and expertise on topics related to mental health, loneliness and nature-based solutions.
How do our partners work on loneliness? How are they involved in RECETAS? Each month, one or more of our experts answer our questions!

🎤 Laura, can you briefly introduce yourself and the purpose of the organization you work for?

I am associate professor of Public Health at the Department of Social Sciences and Community Health at the Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing at the University of Vic (UVic-UCC) in Catalonia (Spain). I studied Medicine at UB (Universitat de Barcelona) and conducted a PhD in Public Health at UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) focusing on loneliness entitled “Loneliness, social support and social participation of older people from a health perspective”.

UVic-UCC is the third ranked young university in Catalonia and Spain and has been ranked 131st in the world in the Times Higher Education Young University Ranking, which focuses on 790 universities that are under 50 years old. The Faculty of Health Sciences and Wellbeing at the UVic-UCC comprises de Degrees of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, Nursing, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy. I am a researcher focused on ageing and belong to the research group M3O lead by Javier Jerez-Roig.

🎤 Why is loneliness a public health issue? 

As far as I interpret the increase of the public awareness around loneliness in the last years, it has been key the link between loneliness and health. In other words, the scientific evidence linking loneliness with a higher mortality than smoking has helped a lot to increase the awareness. And this fact has turned loneliness into a public health issue. However, this is recent. I defended my thesis on loneliness in the public health field in 2017 and by then it was not obvious that loneliness would be seen as a public health issue. Although I hope this change of perspective will help to move forward in the knowledge and practice to tackle loneliness, it also has the potential to medicalise it, which is a way I think we should avoid. Moreover, loneliness is linked to losing the meaning of life, since others make our life worth living (or at least help a lot). And this existential aspect is to me far more relevant than the health impacts.  

🎤 How is loneliness addressed in Barcelona? Do you know if there any policy or strategy implemented by the municipality to tackle this issue? 

The City Council of Barcelona launched, just before the pandemic, the Municipal Strategy Against Loneliness 2020-2030 with a lifespan perspective. This Strategy has Scientific Advisory Board and I am member of it. In this frame, a current mapping of the city of Barcelona has shown that Barcelona City Council has 268 current projects, services and programmes that are directly or indirectly aimed at alleviating loneliness. Two municipal programmes to highlight are: VinclesBCN, which is a platform created in 2014 to alleviate loneliness among older people with more than three thousand users; Radars, which is a community action service launched in 2008 also aimed at alleviating loneliness and preventing situations of risk among older people, through collaboration with neighbours, shops, pharmacies, volunteers and other organisations. The project’s goal is to transform neighbourhoods into more humane, safe, participatory and supportive communities. 

🎤 Can you tell us more about the impact of Covid-19 on loneliness? 

My optimistic view about the impact of Covid-19 on loneliness is that, after all, I hope that the pandemic might has showed us how vulnerable and interdependent we are and can become, the importance of caring and looking after ourselves, and the unfair and avoidable inequalities that pervade in our society. Likewise, I think and hope it has raised awareness about loneliness: generally, on how relevant are social relationships  for our wellbeing and, specifically, how much loneliness can be suffered while being surrounded by others in nursing homes.  

🎤 What is your approach to loneliness in your personal research? With which public are you working? 

I have been always focused on intervention studies more than observational studies. I got my inspiration from “the Circle of Friends” methodology developed by Kaisu Pitkala et al. Therefore, from the beginning, my approach to work on loneliness has been developing groups of older people where they can build and find peer support and get to know assets in their community to be engaged and participate.   

🎤 How are you involved in the RECETAS project? What are you working on at the moment? 

In RECETAS I am the leader of WP4, which aims at coordinating the testing of the nature-based social prescribing in the six cities (Barcelona, Helsinki, Praga, Marseille, Cuenca in Ecuador and Melbourne). And I am also in charge of the clinical trial in Barcelona. We are finishing the pilot and preparing to start the trial in January 2023.  

RECETAS workshop in Barcelona
Loneliness, societies and nature: Reflections of a changing world

In November 17, within the framework of the activities around World Mental Health Day, Osonament in collaboration with UVic-UCC held the workshop « Loneliness, societies and nature: Reflections of a changing world ».

Laura Coll Planas, Laia Briones Buixassa and Aina Carbó Cardeña from UVic-UCC, as researchers of the European project RECETAS, carried out this workshop with participatory dynamics at the civic center of Can Pau Raba in Vic. In the first part, we reflected together about the loneliness that we feel and suffer. Questions such as « What is loneliness for you? » were answered through diverse and varied photographs that organizers brought. In the second part, we shared the ways we have to face loneliness, especially how nature helps us to feel less alone. In this dynamic, each participant explained the photographs they had previously brought to the workshop on these topics. It was very emotional to listen to the voices, experiences and opinions of each person who attended.

Finally, we explained that the RECETAS European Project has as its main objective to deal with loneliness by developing and testing social interventions based on nature following the Circle of Friends method originated in Finland. These interventions will be carried out in several cities around the world during 2023 such as Barcelona, Helsinki, Prague, Cuenca (Ecuador), Melbourne and Marseille and it is also planned to be carried out in Vic.