Here at Intelligent Health, we're celebrating 2 million participants engaged through our flagship community engagement programme, Beat the Street. We will be hosting a series of webinars over the course of this year to platform best practice across key policy areas, including 'Nurturing a thriving natural environment.' During this panel webinar, we'll be discussing the integral links between safe, equitable and enhanced access to nature and our personal health and reconnecting communities with green and blue spaces from the perspective of those working at delivery level and shaping policy.
About our panellists...
Jade Saunders, Senior Policy Advisor (Access to Nature) at DEFRA
Starting out in the third sector working for national and small charities, Jade made the move to Defra in 2021. She started off working for the Royal Life Saving Society and after that she moved to a small youth charity in Birmingham, eventually leading the mentoring service. It was here that she developed an interest in policy and eventually made the move to Defra, working in the 30 x 30, Landscapes and Access team ever since. Now she focusses on access and more importantly, the benefits of accessing nature- testifying to the power on a personal level.
Sir Tim Smit KBE, Co-Founder at Eden Project & The Lost Gardens of Heligan
Sir Tim Smit read Archaeology and Anthropology at Durham University. This began a lifelong passion for regeneration and working to put things into good heart. Following occupations embracing his many interests from Archaeology through music to wreck diving, Rare Breed animal husbandry and building restoration, in 1990 He ‘discovered’ and then restored ‘The Lost Gardens of Heligan’ with John Nelson. Of which he remains a Director. This is now one of the UK’s best loved gardens having been named ‘Garden of the Year’ by BBC Countryfile Awards (Mar 2018). Tim’s book ‘The Lost Gardens of Heligan’ won Book of the Year in 1997. Tim is today Executive Chair and Co-founder of the multi award-winning Eden Project in Cornwall. Since its opening in 2001, over 23 million people have come to see a once sterile pit, turned into a cradle of life containing world-class horticulture and startling architecture symbolic of human endeavour and our dependence and unbreakable part in the systems of the natural world.
Dom Higgins, Head of Health and Education at The Wildlife Trusts
Dom Higgins is Head of Health and Education at The Wildlife Trusts and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health. For the past 20 years or so, he has worked to integrate nature into education, the health service and people’s everyday lives. Prior to joining The Wildlife Trusts, he was Director of External Affairs at TCV, where he led on the development of Green Gyms. He also has a passion for education reform, advocating for teaching and learning that more effectively meets the challenges of climate change and nature loss. He also chairs Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Nature and Wellbeing Strategy Group, sits on Oxford, Cambridge, and RSA’s Advisory Board and the University of Reading’s ‘Climate Ambassadors Programme’ Steering Group.
David Drake, Director of People and Nature at Natural England
David is Director for People and Nature at Natural England and as such accountable for setting strategic direction for Natural England's work to connect and engage people with nature and nature recovery, and for delivery of key strategic programmes to do so. These include: understanding and removing barriers to access; reaching new audiences (e.g. by linking to health and education); creating new opportunities for access (e.g. by enabling creation of green infrastructure and National Trails) and supporting community outreach programmes. All underpinned by a strong and developing evidence base demonstrating the wider benefits of nature connection.
About our Chair...
Dr William Bird MBE, CEO at Intelligent Health
As a family GP in the 1990s, he pioneered the concept of social prescribing by setting up the first Health Walk scheme, closely followed by the first Green Gym. William is now a global authority on health and activity, and is an advisor to the World Health Organisation, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and Sport England. In 2010, he set up Intelligent Health, an organisation that has a mission to build healthier, active and more connected communities. Recognising William’s contribution to health and physical activity, William was awarded an MBE in the 2010 Queen’s New Year Honours and as an Honorary Professor at the University of Exeter in 2021. In 2022, Dr Bird was officially appointed as the Chair of Active Essex, the Active Partnership for Essex.
