Beyond Our Walls: How External Environments Shape Our Health & Well-Being

Why the world outside your door may be powerful medicine you're not taking

So far in our look at the health ecosystem in our Health and Wellness Foundations, we’ve explored our home and work environments. We continue this week by taking expanding our look into how our external environments contribute to our health and well-being…

We spend enormous effort optimizing what happens inside our homes, from perfecting our diets, our sleep routines, our exercise regimes, yet the spaces beyond our front doors are powerful supports to our health. Parks and plazas, farmers’ markets and festival grounds, forest trails and neighborhood streets: these external environments are not merely backdrops to daily life. They are active ingredients in it. Emerging research in environmental psychology, public health, and social neuroscience is making the case that where we go — and who we encounter when we get there — profoundly influences how long and how well we live.

This article explores the most …