Background It is commonly believed that nature has positive impacts on children’s health, including physical, mental and social dimensions. This review focuses on how accessibility to, exposure to and engagement with nature affects the mental health of children and teenagers. Methods Ten academic databases were used to systematically search and identify primary research papers in English or French from 1990 to 1 March 2017. Papers were included for review based on their incorporation of nature, children and teenagers (0–18 years), quantitative results and focus on mental health. Results Of the 35 papers included in the review, the majority focused on emotional well-being and attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity disorder. Other outcome measures included overall mental health, self-esteem, stress, resilience, depression and health-related quality of life. About half of all reported findings revealed statistically significant positive relationships between nature and mental health outcomes and almost half reported no statistical significance. Conclusions Findings support the contention that nature positively influences mental health; however, in most cases, additional research with more rigorous study designs and objective measures of both nature and mental health outcomes are needed to confirm statistically significant relationships. Existing evidence is limited by the cross-sectional nature of most papers.

Objectives. We examined whether certain characteristics of the social and physical environment influence a child's mode of travel between home and school.Methods. Students aged 11 to 13 years from 21 schools throughout London, Ontario, answered questions from a travel behavior survey. A geographic information system linked survey responses for 614 students who lived within 1 mile of school to data on social and physical characteristics of environments around the home and school. Logistic regression analysis was used to test the influence of environmental factors on mode of travel (motorized vs “active”) to and from school.Results. Over 62% of students walked or biked to school, and 72% from school to home. The likelihood of walking or biking to school was positively associated with shorter trips, male gender, higher land use mix, and presence of street trees. Active travel from school to home was also associated with lower residential densities and lower neighborhood incomes.Conclusions. Our findings demonstrate that active travel is associated with environmental characteristics and suggest that school planners should consider these factors when siting schools in order to promote increased physical activity among students.

A growing body of research suggests that the suburbanization of food retailers in North America and the United Kingdom in recent decades has contributed to the emergence of urban 'food deserts', or disadvantaged areas of cities with relatively poor access to healthy and affordable food. This paper explores the evolution of food deserts in a mid-sized Canadian city (London, Ontario) by using a geographic information system (GIS) to map the precise locations of supermarkets in 1961 and 2005; multiple techniques of network analysis were used to assess changing levels of supermarket access in relation to neighbourhood location, socioeconomic characteristics, and access to public transit.

An intervention, which used elements of the theory of planned behavior, was developed and tested in a randomized control trial (RCT) involving households in the city of London, Ontario, Canada. A bespoke methodology involving the direct collection and measurement of food waste within curbside garbage samples of control (n = 58) and treatment households (n = 54) was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. A comparison of garbage samples before and after the intervention revealed that total food waste in treatment households decreased by 31% after the intervention and the decrease was significantly greater (p = .02) than for control households. Similarly, avoidable food waste decreased by 30% in treatment households and was also significantly greater (p = .05) than for control households. Key determinants of treatment household avoidable food waste reduction included personal attitudes, perceived behavioral control, the number of people in a household, and the amount of garbage set out.