National parks for health and wellbeing
This is a great article from The Conversation on why “Visiting a national park is good for our health and well-being.“
Visiting national parks has been found to have numerous health benefits, including reducing stress, depression, anxiety, obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease, and lung disease. Still, these benefits are not equally accessible to all community members.
A recent study in South Australia estimated that every visit to a national park saves the health budget almost $100, with the 22 million day trips to national parks in 2019 potentially shaving more than $2.1 billion off the nation’s health bill yearly.
