On 15 November, Mat White presented his new Horizon Europe project RESONATE - Building individual and community RESilience thrOugh NATurE-based therapies at the British Embassy in Austria. The presentation was part of an event on “Climate Change and the Future of Health” co-organised by UK and Austrian organisations (including the Health and Environment Ministries and the Austrian Academy of Sciences).
Following an introduction by Embassy Staff Sir Andy Haines (Professor of Environmental Change and Public Health, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine) gave the first presentation on the broad challenges to health that climate change poses.
This was followed by a presentation from Mat White entitled “Urban nature can help mitigate the health effects of climate change”, which outlined how Nature-based Solutions and Nature-based Therapies can help people both adapt to issues such as Urban Heat Island effects and mitigate others by promoting more pro-environmental behaviours through building biopsychosocial resilience.
A subsequent panel discussion and audience Q & A session also included Dr. Claudia Lichtblau (Gesundheit Österreich), Dr. Roman Hoffmann (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and Ulla Heher (Future Health Lab). Many audience members expressed a lack of knowledge about social prescribing and nature-based social prescribing in particular, but immediately saw the potential benefits and expressed support for RESONATE and similar projects.
