A program that prescribes park visits for better health gets a booster shot.

Each day doctors write prescriptions for medications to combat diseases and conditions like diabetes, heart ailments and depression. What if, along with a prescription for medication, came a prescription to head to the park for some fresh air? That was the impetus behind ParkRx, a movement that began in the San Francisco Bay Area over a decade ago, leaning on hundreds of studies concluding that connecting with nature and being active outdoors can be as healing as medicine in some cases.

ParkRx Monterey County is now here, although it’s still little known. It was developed over the past year by partners Blue Zones Project Monterey County, Big Sur Land Trust, Ventana Wildlife Society, Monterey County Parks, Monterey County Health Department and the Monterey Peninsula Regional Park District.

Over the summer, the program got a boost from three undergraduate students from Middlebury College in Vermont – Lucy Inkster, Tony Morocho and Israel Ostos Escalante – who came to the Middlebury Institute of International Studies for five weeks, working with graduate student Nadia Pshonyak, serving as their mentor, as part of the Middlebury Social Impact Corps. The students’ task was to promote ParkRx Monterey County and gather data to help the program grow.

Using the interactive map on parkrxmontereycounty.org, the students visited over 25 parks all over the county, from neighborhood pocket parks to state parks in Big Sur – mostly by public transportation since they didn’t have a car until later in their stay – to get a feel for what was available.

“The parks here are well established and clean and the beaches are great. We found a lot of positives, and while there’s always room for improvement, we’re working with a good foundation here,” says Inkster, a political science major.

Despite that foundation, through interviewing numerous residents in English and Spanish at farmers markets and elsewhere on the Monterey Peninsula and in Salinas, they discovered there are barriers to enjoying local open spaces. In Salinas, 41 percent of people surveyed said lack of transportation is a main reason they don’t visit parks; lack of time was cited by 25 percent of respondents. In Marina the results were flipped: 44 percent said lack of time was their biggest reason.

“It was very eye-opening,” says Ostos Escalante, who grew up in Venezuela before moving to Florida at age 12. “I’m not an outdoors person, not because I don’t have the resources but because of a lack of interest – but coming here [I’m] seeing that people actually want to be outdoors, but they can’t because they don’t have the resources.” In East Alisal, some people mentioned a fear of gang activity at local parks as a deterrent.

ParkRx Monterey County is now on its way to becoming better well known: Kendra Howell, a senior policy lead for the Blue Zones Project, says it’s already at work through Salinas Valley Health Medical Clinics, where patients with certain conditions receive a park prescription and a link to the website in their aftercare statement. (Salinas Valley Health is a financial contributor to Blue Zones Monterey County.) There are plans to spread the practice to Monterey County Health clinics and Montage Health, as well.