Blue Care: A systematic review of blue space interventions for health and wellbeing.

Global evidence of disconnect from our natural surroundings is growing as the world’s ecosystems increasingly come under threat from human pressures, in partic-ular waterways, coasts and oceans. This in turn poses human health risks and results in the loss of potential health and wellbeing benefits associated with blue spaces i.e. outdoor water environments. Among policy, practice and academia there is increas-ing interest in the use of blue space in the promotion of human health and wellbeing. As part of a research initiative to qualify how important nature (green and blue spac-es) are for human health and wellbeing, the NEAR-Health project team carried out the first global systematic review of health or wellbeing benefits of therapeutic blue space interventions (BSIs). This review highlights the need to improve our under-standing of complex nature-based interventions for health.

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