Grounds for health: the intersection of green school grounds and health‐promoting schools

Abstract

Despite the growing body of research on green school grounds, relatively little has been written about their relationship with health promotion, particularly from a holistic health perspective. It is this relationship that we explore in this paper – the power and potential of green school grounds to promote health and well‐being and to be an integral element of multifaceted, school‐based health promotion strategies. Specifically, we bring together recent research to examine green school grounds as places where the interests of educators and children’s health advocates can meet, inform and support one another. By grounding our comments in recent thinking about health‐promoting schools, we highlight the growing body of evidence that green school grounds, as a school setting, can contribute to children’s physical, mental, social and spiritual well‐being.

Keywords:

• school grounds
• children’s health
• green design
• health‐promoting schools

Notes

1. Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19–22 June 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization no. 2, 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948.

2. See Ronson and MacDougall as well as the Australian Health Promoting Schools Association regarding guiding principles for health promoting schools at: www.hlth.qut.edu.au/ph/ahpsa/about.jsp

3. What is particularly interesting about this study is that they did not simply code nature dichotomously as present or absent; rather, they coded nature as a continuous variable.