Outdoor Health Solutions integrates the basic health support derived from active and reflective time outdoors with large-scale and targeted community health goals. The premise for this work grows out of, Founder, Andrew Lindsey’s exploration of the benefits of nature for child development while pursuing his Master’s in Elementary Education in 2001-2003. Just prior to deciding to pursue his Master’s degree, Andrew had been working for four years as a para-educator paired with a child with autism. This was at a rural school in Vermont where the playground was bordered by fields and woods and often Andrew would walk with the student in these areas when the classroom environment proved a poor fit. As the student gained more independence, Andrew’s role grew to include work with another student who needed additional support, this time for emotional reasons. Again, the surrounding woods provided a necessary supportive arena. In fact, seeing the potential of the child’s positive response to the outdoors prompted Andrew to wonder if this couldn’t be achieved on a classroom scale so he sought out a graduate degree, the culmination of which was a Master’s thesis, Some Pure Event: Redefining the Foundations of Environmental Education (a copy can be found in the newsletter archives).
Immediately after graduating Andrew put the plan in action as a third and fourth grade teacher in another nearby rural Vermont school by setting a goal to spend 50% of the day outside. After a hasty grant, every kid had a backpack with a clipboard, magnifying glass, ruler, field guide and pair of snowshoes! Those were the “laboratory days.” Fast forward to 2009, Andrew had left the snowshoes behind, had a four year old daughter, and had begun work with Wilderness Youth Project in Santa Barbara, CA. Watching the development of his own child and her response to the natural world further solidified Andrew’s beliefs in the supportive potential of nature connection.
Now it is 2022. In the last thirteen years Andrew has spent over six thousand hours with groups of ten to fifteen children outside in places of wild character. He has seen school districts wrestle with the burden of producing adequate test scores while attending to their social and emotional wellness. He has seen the paired disaster of fire and mudslide strain the resiliency of children and families. As a member of PeRC (Pediatric Resiliency Collaborative) he has seen health professionals search for ways to respond to our growing understanding of ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences). And most importantly, he has seen access to nature emerge as a profoundly important social justice issue.
It is with this understanding and social imperative that Andrew decided to bring his expertise with children and nature to the greater arena of community health with the founding of Outdoor Health Solutions.