Staying healthy can be as easy as taking a hike in the Blue Ridge Parkway or one of the other units of the National Park System. And thanks to a program created by the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation, your doctor can monitor your progress! / Blue Ridge Parkway FoundationMore and more doctors are turning to an innovative tool to help children feel their best: nature. Through a growing movement called Park Rx (or Park Prescriptions), physicians are prescribing excursions in the outdoors for the health benefits.

More and more doctors are turning to an innovative tool to help children feel their best: nature. Through a growing movement called Park Rx (or Park Prescriptions), physicians are prescribing excursions in the outdoors for the health benefits.

In today’s world, kids spend more than seven hours per day on some type of screened device, compared to a mere seven minutes in unstructured outdoor play. These numbers are having a profound effect on children’s physical and mental health. Time spent being active outdoors has been shown to improve issues ranging from obesity to ADHD.

The Kids in Parks program of the Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation is supporting this movement to improve the overall well-being of children with its TRACK Rx program, which connects doctors to its nationwide network of trails designed to engage families with public outdoor spaces near them.

Here’s how it work: Kids in Parks partners with pediatricians and nurses to promote outdoor fun with mini-trailhead signs and self-guided brochures that are installed in the lobbies of doctors’ offices and community health care centers. These professionals then write prescriptions to underscore the benefits of the outdoors on health.

Once a child “fills” their prescription by taking a hike, they register their activity at KidsinParks.com. Through a serial number system developed by Kids in Parks, physicians can measure the impact of the program because they receive a notification about their patients’ excursions. Plus, the child receives a prize in the mail as a reward.

The TRACK Rx program is expanding rapidly with more than 90 doctor offices and 350 healthcare providers in Maryland and North Carolina already writing prescriptions.

“We’ve seen a large uptick in TRACK Rx registrations this summer,” said Jason Urroz, director of the Kids in Parks program. “It’s our hope that once healthcare providers see data demonstrating the results of this type of intervention they will rapidly embraced the Park Rx movement and more and more families will head outdoors to feel good.”

To learn more about the program, visit KidsinParks.com or contact Urroz at [email protected] or (866) 308- 2773, ext. 384.