Greenspace, Threes, Environment, Health, Neighborhoods, Cardiovascular disease

Green Heart Louisville

Jacob Schor, ND

Here is some good news. If you consult the website ClinicalTrials.org under the designation NCT03670524 you will find a fascinating trial described

The study known as Health, Environment and Action in Louisville, or by its acronym HEAL Louisville is most often referred to as Green Heart Louisville. The study is sponsored by the University of Louisville, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and The Nature Conservancy. The official description goes like this:

The purpose of this study is to examine how the environment and neighborhood characteristics affects the health of the area residents. The study will help determine how changing neighborhood characteristics, such as green space, affect heart health, risk factors for other diseases, sense of well-being or neighborhood cohesion.

Put into more straightforward words, the researchers are going to ‘green’ several neighborhoods by planting trees in Louisville and see what it does. Not a few trees, but the goal is a lot of trees, 8,000 of them, and not necessarily small trees either. News stories talk about 50-foot tall trees. Researchers plan on tracking a long list of health parameters and psychological measures in 700 people to see what effect this intervention will have. The Nature Conservancy is teaming up with the University of Louisville to make all of this happen.

The primary hypothesis underlying the study is that exposure to neighborhood greenspace diminishes cardiovascular disease risk by decreasing the levels of ambient air pollution.

Heart disease cost money and planting trees may save money.

There is a list of secondary outcomes the researchers are hoping to see that includes a decrease in hospital admissions, lowering measures of psychosocial stress, decreased risk of mortality, buffered noise, decrease in crime, increased physical activity in residents and increased property values. We have good reason to hope for these kinds of changes based on results from already published research. These earlier studies have shown statistical associations between green space and all of these plus other positive population attributes.

Association does not prove causation, as we all know, and there may be other plausible explanations for why we see green space appear so beneficial. The easier may simply be economics. Maintaining a green neighborhood costs money. Increased income is always associated with better health. This is not just because rich people see more doctors or eat better food. There is a psychological benefit to having money and status that improves health. People who win big in life live longer. And trees cost money. We have a 100-year-old maple in front of our Denver home, and paying the arborists who care for it every year or so is not inexpensive.

This Louisville Green Heart study appears to be the first prospective trial of this sort, certainly on this scale, that tests our current belief that green space will improve community health. There won’t be a control group in Louisville. You cannot plant a placebo tree.

If the hypothesis proves valid the results of this study will argue that taking care of our urban environments and maintaining an adequate green canopy pays for itself. This could be exciting.

And yet part of me feels pinched by this equation. It feels so, what is that word that has gotten popular? Transactional. We do this and we want this outcome in trade. Somehow this deal doesn’t capture just why trees are so important.

Deep down I suspect that all life is sentient to some extent. Certainly, trees appear to be. I also think that in some way that we are aware of this sentience, that it creates a background of thought that enriches our experience of consciousness. Kind of like the soundtrack to a movie or the laugh-track to a sitcom. We may not be focused on what trees are thinking, but they provide a backdrop to life. We can live without it, but we are poorer for the experience. Being surrounded by nature enriches our life in ways that we need not and should not put dollar signs on but should nevertheless desire.

Leaving these ruminations aside though, this Green Heart Study remains the most upbeat news I have heard in a long time. Listen to the story links below and I bet you’ll be hunting for your work gloves and shovel and wanting to volunteer to help plant trees in Kentucky.

Listen to the full story of the Green Heart Study: https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/kentucky/stories-in-kentucky/green-heart-project/

Watch a short feature from PBS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0QLQe13gww

Our Tree: if you Google Map 2209 Eudora, Denver, you will see us sitting on the front porch of the red brick house….