BLOOM: Boldly Living outdOOrs for Mental Health

Summary

In 2019, the Office of the California Surgeon General launched the ACEs Aware Initiative in collaboration with the California Department of Health Care Services. This ambitious campaign aims to develop a network of care model of healthcare delivery that explicitly links health resources within communities to clinicians screening patients for ACEs. The ACEs Aware Initiative recognizes nature experiences as one of seven "stress busters." Indeed, California boasts many outdoor resources for clinicians to integrate into the network of care. Through a calming effect on the autonomic nervous system, providing a setting for supportive relationships to develop and physical activity to occur, time in nature may help California prevent, heal and treat ACEs and the clinical sequelae. As one of the most common psychiatric disorders in youth, anxiety remains one of the most important sequelae of ACEs. There is a gap in evidence evaluating nature-based programs for child mental health. This study will evaluate BLOOM \[Boldly Living outdOOrs for Mental health\], a new intervention which is a modified version of an existing nature-based curriculum called SHINE (Stay Healthy In Nature Everyday) curriculum currently in place at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland, which takes youth and their families into nature once a month for stress relief. This new intervention mirrors SHINE except that it will be tailored to children ages 9-12 with a history of ACEs and current anxiety. This study will evaluate the benefits of a group intervention model, an independent nature-outing model, and a comparison to a wait-listed control group. Our goal is to provide a scalable model for low-cost mental health care to the California Department of Health Care Services.

Conditions

• Anxiety
• Stress Disorder, Posttraumatic
• Loneliness
• Adverse Childhood Experiences

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Group Nature Outings

A 6 week nature-based intervention for pediatric anxiety. Every other week group outings for families in nature, alternating with every other week nature-based goals for families at home.

BEHAVIORAL

Family Outings

6 weeks of weekly outings into nature. These will be supported by the research team through a weekly text message and written materials on skill building and activities to do outdoors.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of California, San Francisco

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Nooshin Razani, MD MPH · UCSF and UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

9 Years

Max Age

12 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2023-07-18

Primary Completion

2023-09-30

Completion

2023-09-30

Countries

• United States

Study Locations