Credit: the author. Participants provided consent for the photo to be used.
By Helen Hoyle.
My research in collaboration with parkrun and three UK events, suggests that women and people in deprived, ethnically diverse settings might have most to gain from parkrun as an active green health intervention. This might be prescribed by a practitioner as alternative or supplement to traditional medical approaches to tackling wide-ranging health challenges, such as depression, or overweight and obesity.
Physical fitness was the dominant initial motivator for parkrun participation, yet when asked why they continued to participate in parkrun, participants were increasingly likely to report social reasons, stress relief, fresh air and scenery and volunteering, as motivating factors. These increases from initial to ongoing motivating factors were all greater for women than men, with three female participants explaining they had already been prescribed parkrun, and how they valued the holistic benefits of exercise in nature over a traditional medical prescription:
“‘I find being outdoors and exercise better than drugs for managing mood. Nature! Greenery, water, trees!’.
When asked about where they most liked to exercise participants preferred parks and greenspaces, and alongside water, with built urban settings and gyms the least popular. At the scale of the individual parkrun, lakesides, associated birds and wildlife and woodlands were most appreciated.
parkrun, (with a small ‘p’) isa not-for-profit organisation offering free, weekly, timed 5-km runs or walks in public settings. The three UK parkruns I collaborated with were chosen because they had contrasting population and health profiles: i) Stevenage (new town health profiles close to England benchmark); ii) Barking (Inner London, ethnically diverse, economically deprived, inactive); and iii) Fell Foot: (Rural Lakeland, low ethnic diversity, income deprivation, healthier than benchmark). parkrun participants completed a questionnaire immediately after a parkrun to capture their thoughts (see image).
My findings have transformative implications for addressing health inequalities more widely. Public health professionals might develop further active programmes in greenspaces and nature beyond parkrun to increase the access to and engagement with outdoor natural settings amongst populations most in need. Governments should priorities funding for life-enhancing parks and green spaces, ideally incorporating water and woodland settings, to optimise their benefits. Further research amongst underrepresented communities is needed to understand barriers to participation.
Relational Thinking 