Ecological medicine, a new approach within health science, is gaining attention for its focus on the health benefits of human connection with nature, animals, and each other. This field draws from longstanding ideas that being connected to the natural world supports well-being for both people and the planet.
Rebecca Calisi Rodríguez, associate professor at the University of California, Davis and director of the Green Care Lab, stated: “Everything you suspected was good for you — fresh air, trees, animal companions, purpose, reciprocity — turns out to have peer-reviewed backing.”
The approach also incorporates Indigenous perspectives on how humans relate to their environment. A recent consensus statement defining ecological medicine was published in the journal Ecohealth by Calisi Rodríguez along with Lynette Hart and Alessandro Ossola from UC Davis.
The development of this statement followed a 2024 symposium at UCLA organized by faculty including Professors Helen Hansen and Michael Makhinson. Landon Pollack from Yale University was also involved. Hansen now directs the UCLA Ecological Medicine & Psychedelic Studies Initiative alongside Pollack as codirector.
Ossola noted: “The organizers built a community that was very diverse, with very open conversations.”
Hart emphasized expanding beyond traditional research on therapeutic benefits of human-animal interaction. “We need to take a wider perspective,” she said. “The goal is a new kind of medicine that fosters health rather than chasing diseases.”
Ecological medicine builds on but extends beyond the One Health concept by emphasizing not just infectious disease but also psychological and social connections among people, animals, and their environment.
Ossola’s Urban Science Lab has studied how urban design impacts health outcomes—such as measuring shade in California school playgrounds to assess effects on temperature and well-being. He argued that urban landscapes should be considered important public health resources like emergency rooms or pharmacies.
“We know that if you live in a more natural environment with connection to nature, it has escalating effects on health,” Ossola said. Practices such as Japan’s shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing”) have been shown to reduce stress levels. The British National Health Service’s Green Social Prescribing program encourages nature-based activities for improved mental and physical health.
“There’s a reason people put plants in their homes,” Ossola added.
Calisi Rodríguez shifted her research focus after years studying stress hormones’ effects on behavior. She now explores how exposure to nature can aid healing through her work at the Green Care Lab near UC Davis.
“After enough years staring at stress hormones, I realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my career documenting what breaks us. I wanted to study how we heal,” she said. “Ecological Medicine is a growing field I believe in so deeply that I’m reshaping my entire research program around it.”
UC Davis positions itself as a leader in ecological medicine due to its large campus size, commitment to sustainability and environmental studies, strengths in veterinary and human medicine, biological sciences programs, and an interdisciplinary culture encouraging public service.
Campus initiatives such as the UC Davis Arboretum provide access to natural spaces for students and staff while projects like Sheepmowers (which uses sheep grazing for groundskeeping) include surveys assessing student mental health impacts alongside ecological results.
Dairy cattle near student dorms as well as free-ranging turkeys and semi-feral cats are part of daily campus life at UC Davis.
Calisi Rodríguez concluded: “This paper marks the birth of a new field, the moment health science stops hovering over the wreckage asking ‘What went wrong?’ and finally turns around to ask, ‘OK, but what helps us stay upright in the first place?’”
She added: “Ecological Medicine tells us how to create lives worth living. Giving this field a name gives us a compass, a vocabulary, and a way to study how humans, communities and ecosystems can actually thrive, not just survive.”
