The 2020 SHIFT Summit
HEALTHY BY NATURE
Equity, Access and The Mental Health Benefits of Time Outside
Dates: October 14-16, 2020
Location: Jackson, Wyoming, via Zoom
The 2020 SHIFT Summit will be broadcast virtually from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, from October 14-16. Entitled “Healthy by Nature,” the Summit will focus on the mental health benefits of time outside, with a specific focus on health equity and access to nature.
The 2020 SHIFT Summit has three main goals:
The program will be developed around two elements integral to these objectives:
The three days of the Summit will be developed as follows.
Within each of the three days, the Summit will be divided into three tracks.
See here for a schedule of events. An overview of the programming is as follows.
Day 1 of The SHIFT Summit looks at the evidence for the mental health benefits of nature contact with some of the leading researchers in the field.
Following an opening keynote by Dr. Lisa Fitzpatrick, the Medical Director of Medicaid from 2015-18, the morning will be developed around three panel discussions:
Track 1: The Effects of Nature Contact on the Mental Health of Children, Teens and Early Adults
This panel discussion looks at the evidence for outdoor play and exposure to nature on the mental health of children.
Track 2: Nature Contact and Psychological Resiliency in the Time of COVID
This panel discussion looks at the evidence for nature as a means to enhance psychological resiliency, as well as the barriers to this low-risk, low-cost mental health intervention.
Track 3: Blue Space, Green Space
This panel looks at the evidence for parks, forests and waters as mental health interventions, as well as the ways resource managers are centering the mental health benefits of nature within their planning processes.
The panel discussions will be followed by “Researcher Roundtables:” three 30-minute rounds of world cafe-style breakouts for each of the three topics that allows participants to continue discussing panel topics in more intimate groups.
In the afternoon, SHIFT’s second annual Poster Session will feature findings from a series of new studies. Presenters will have five minutes each to present their research, followed by five minutes of Q&A from the audience.
The second day of The 2020 SHIFT Summit will focus on the real-world application of the evidence for the mental health benefits of time outside.
Following presentations by winners of The 2020 SHIFT Awards, three separate panel discussions will be developed around the Summit’s three tracks of Next Gen, Psychological Resliency and Resource Management.
Track 1: Delivering the Mental Health Benefits of Nature Contact to Our Children
This panel will feature a discussion among 2020 SHIFT Award winners and 2020 cohort members of The Emerging Leaders Program about how they’re delivering the mental health benefits of nature to children, teens and early adults in innovative, impactful and replicable ways.
Track 2: Best Practices for Outdoor Recreation and Nature-Based Programming for Veterans
SHIFT’s Outdoor Rec and Nature-Based Programming for Vets study is designed to document the current landscape of outdoor recreation programming and nature-based interventions for military veterans. This discussion looks at the preliminary findings of the project, and its implications for broader civilian populations who are experiencing trauma.
Track 3: Resource Managers as Mental Health Providers
This panel looks at the ways resource managers are delivering the mental health benefits of nature with the lands and waters under their jurisdiction.
Following the panel discussions, participants will self-select to breakout rooms with panel members from their respective panels to continue discussing panel topics in more intimate groups.
The third and final day of the 2020 SHIFT Summit will focus on “making it real:” the ways we can institutionalize nature as a mental-health intervention within policy at the community, municipal, state and federal levels.
Following a keynote address by SHIFT Award winner Atiya Wells, three panel discussions will be developed.
Track 1: The Children’s Bill of Rights
This panel explores policy measures to center nature as a mental health benefit for children, teens and early adults.
Track 2: Distributing Nature’s Therapeutic Effects Equitably in the Midst of the Pandemic
This panel looks at ways we can institutionalize nature’s healing effects to help address trauma, particularly among vulnerable communities, amid the convergence of multiple crises.
Track 3: A Stronger Argument for Nature Itself
Having seen the ways nature can deliver mental health benefits in our time of need, this panel looks at how we center the mental health benefits within resource management planning—and use the resulting case for nature as a public health care delivery system to make a stronger argument for investments in our lands, waters, parks and public spaces.
Following the panel discussions, world-cafe style breakout groups will continue the conversations on each topic in intimate groups.
Registration for The 2020 Summit may be made here.
Sign up to receive notifications about The 2020 SHIFT Summit.
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Will a virtual SHIFT be similar to an in-person SHIFT?
Similar to “live” SHIFTs, The 2020 SHIFT Summit will use a combination of keynote presentations, think tanks, workshops, panel discussions and world cafe style breakout groups to achieve the objectives noted above. Organizers are committed to making a virtual SHIFT just as dynamic, and even more inclusive, than “regular” SHIFTs.
What technology will the virtual Summit utilize?
Since January, SHIFT has developed its Health and Nature Webinar Series on Zoom. This platform will form the basis for the virtual Summit. Additional technologies such as EventBrite and Whova will be utilized to complement the Zoom platform.
How much will tickets cost?
Tickets will be available at the following rates.
To increase access to the Summit, scholarships will be available for those who would otherwise be unable to attend. These scholarships waive all Summit fees.
How many scholarship passes will be available?
100 All-Summit passes will be made available for those in need of financial assistance. Scholarships will be announced by September 25.
How will SHIFT center health equity and access to nature with the 2020 programming?
The focus of The 2020 SHIFT Summit on equity, access and the mental health benefits of time outside will feature research that underscores the connection between access to nature and public health outcomes, particularly as they relate to mental health.
Research will be complemented by “best practices,” i.e., The SHIFT Awards, which are selected on the basis of Impact, Innovation, and Replicability.
For 2020, we’ve added another criterion, Health Equity, to our SHIFT Award evaluation matrix.
This additional criterion allows us to consider work on the basis of the answer to the question, “Does the work enhance access to outdoor recreation, green space or nature for underserved communities?”
By emphasizing initiatives’ work on increasing equitable access to outdoor recreation and green space, with an understanding that such access is directly correlated with public health outcomes, the Summit will be developed around work that addresses structural and systemic inequities in substantive and scalable ways.
Another cornerstone of our programming is The Emerging Leaders Program (ELP), which prepares early career leaders to address issues related to public health, conservation, advocacy, structures of oppression and community engagement.
During each ELP, participants gain familiarization with content that will be discussed at SHIFT. They also lead group discussions and explore different perspectives alongside fellow cohort members and ELP facilitators. The experience allows them to discuss issues relevant to their work amongst their peers and provides them with tools they can use to bring SHIFT’s coalition-building model to the programming at The SHIFT Summit as well as back to their communities.
With both SHIFT and ELP, we intentionally engage panelists and participants in programmatic development, which helps ensure authentic representation throughout our programming.
The ELP curriculum sets aside time to talk about equity, inclusion and disparities in all our discussions. The ELP facilitators are selected to provide structure and help navigate challenging discussions. This in turn allows us to discuss the impact of issues such as COVID 19 and how it personifies health disparities, the importance of advocacy during tense times and other topics not regularly addressed in “typical work” environment.
N.B.: This page will be updated with additional details.
