Last semester, the Georgetown Earth Commons Institute, the university’s hub for environmental research and advocacy, launched Nature Rx. Nature Rx is an initiative aiming to transform student mental health by encouraging students to spend time in outside.
More than 10 years ago, a group of doctors with the National Parks Service in D.C., inspired by the researched benefits of exposure to nature for mental health, launched Nature Rx to alleviate student mental health concerns. Today, it has become a national movement cropping up in college campuses across the country, including Cornell University, the University of California, Davis, and now, Georgetown.
Claire Cheah (SFS ’26), a student assistant at the Earth Commons, started the planning process for the Nature Rx program at Georgetown in the spring of 2023. Collaborating with university staff and faculty, Cheah identified student mental health needs on campus and began to build the initiative on the Hilltop.
“I wanted to work with the intersection of mental health and nature. That’s why I applied [to work at Earth Commons] in the first place,” she said. “It was rewarding to just kind of bring that to our campus and help build the program.”
Research has repeatedly shown that time spent in nature has strong mental health benefits, often improving mood, reducing anger and stress, and even mitigating loneliness by strengthening students’ connection to the local community.
Nature RX hopes to build on the momentum from events they held this semester, such as the month-long Get Outside Challenge, which launched on March 18 in celebration of Earth Month.
The Get Outside Challenge pushes participants to complete a weekly outdoor activity ranging from hiking to meditation. These events encourage Georgetown students to check -in with their mental wellbeing and develop their own relationships with nature.
“We want to give them an extra resource rather than saying, ‘Go find your own therapist,’” Cheah said. “We just wanted people to go outside and see for themselves the good that it can do for you.”
One of the main goals of the Nature Rx project, Cheah explained, is to enhance campus green spaces at Georgetown, which are conducive to improving mental health: “There have been so many studies that show, whether you’re in nature or doing exercise in nature, or literally watching a documentary about nature, it [nature] really helps calm you down and put you in a better state.”
“I built a green space map on our website and expanded that to get more of the D.C. area and get that used by people providing mental health resources,” Cheah said.
Nature Rx hosts many of its on-campus projects outside, including at the Hoya Harvest Garden, Georgetown’s volunteer-driven campus farm.
Cheah said that by hosting events in local green spaces, students are able to receive the mental health benefits of nature and become more receptive to other campus health organizations resources including Counseling and Psychiatric Services, the Student Health Center, Outdoor Education, Campus Ministry, and the Disability Cultural Center.
The initiative also hopes to expand its reach beyond other campus mental health services by integrating nature in unlikely places.
“For faculty, how do you take your class outside? Where can you take them where you’re less likely to get disturbed by planes? How do you factor that into your lesson plan?” Shelby Gresch, a Georgetown research associate at the Earth Commons, said.
With more collaborations, Gresch hopes that Nature Rx’s programs will become more visible to more students on campus.
“There’s often this conception around being outdoorsy, like you have to go hike or do these extreme things. That is not really what Nature Rx is about,” Gresch said. “It’s more about being able to engage with nature however you want. It’s always good to make sure the garden is accessible to everyone.”
