In the week in which dementia overtook heart disease to become the leading cause of death in England and Wales, CSH hosted a flagship national conference which looked at how we can use the natural environment to tackle both this and other forms of mental ill health.
Working on behalf of the National Outdoors for All Working Group, CSH invited speakers from across the healthcare and natural environment sectors, led by a keynote programme comprising Gina Radford, Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Gregor Henderson, national lead for mental health and wellbeing at Public Health England, Alistair Burns, national clinical lead for dementia, and James Cross, Chief Executive of Natural England.
Over the course of the day over 110 delegates examined routes to commissioning of natural interventions against a range of mental health and dementia contexts, and also routes through which the scale of these interventions could be stepped up.
The conference concluded that there was a clear need for stronger leadership on this agenda, and also that investment needed to be made into development of consistent and quality assured frameworks through which the impact of these interventions could be measured and reported.
CSH are now discussing the next steps on this critical issue with Natural England.
To see the presentations of the conference please click here.
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