Skip to main content
NIH Record - National Institutes of Health

Lecture on Health Effects of Contact with Nature, Sept. 19

Dr. Gregory Bratman

Dr. Gregory Bratman

Dr. Gregory Bratman, an environmental scientist at the University of Washington, will speak on “Nature Contact and Human Health: A Multimethod Approach” on Wednesday, Sept. 19 at 11 a.m. in the lecture hall of Bldg. 60. His talk is part of NCCIH’s Integrative Medicine Research Lecture Series.

A leader in an emerging field, Bratman’s work takes place at the nexus of psychology, public health and ecology. People around the world are increasingly disconnected from nature, as they spend more and more time (in some cases, over 90 percent) indoors. Yet contact with nature has been shown to benefit human beings in a variety of ways.

Bratman will discuss the current state of the science on nature and mental health, as well as a proposed agenda for future research. He will describe various approaches to measuring the impacts of nature experience on mood, cognitive function and emotion regulation; evidence on   the causal mechanisms that may be responsible; and implications for urban planning and public policy.

The inaugural holder of the Doug Walker endowed faculty fellowship, Bratman is an assistant professor in UW’s School of Environmental Science and Forest Sciences. He holds a Ph.D. in environment and resources from Stanford University, where he was a Kelso fellow and a Packard Foundation fellow. The lecture will be streamed on NIH Videocast and Facebook Live, with more information available at https://nccih.nih.gov/news/events/IMlectures.

Back to Top