Optimizing Health and Sustainability Interventions on Schoolgrounds (OHASIS): Increasing Green Infrastructure for Healthy Cities

We propose to Optimize Health And Sustainability Interventions on School grounds (OHASIS), with the aim to improve children's health and quality of learning environments, and to create improved public spaces for local communities, while simultaneously contributing to increased resilience of cities to environmental, social, and economic changes. One in four Canadian children are at risk of not reaching their full developmental potential, and these challenges present a concern for younger generations, especially since early life development is a strong predictor of health and performance across the life course. The task of increasing resilience to these challenges depends on the scaling up of urban innovations that support healthy living for everyone, protect vulnerable populations, especially children, and fundamentally change the way we approach land use in our communities. The OHASIS project is about transforming school grounds into green "oases" that will create healthy cities by mitigating and adapting to exposures to noise, urban heat islands and harmful pollutants, and promote healthy development and behaviours. Greening school grounds involves increasing access to natural elements such as trees and plants, natural materials, and water features. For children, interaction with green infrastructure improves health and well-being by increasing physical activity, supporting mental health and behaviour, and restoring attention, and improves cognitive function and academic performance. The objectives of the OHASIS project are to: 1.Compile an inventory of the physical and environmental characteristics of the school grounds for all public elementary, middle, and high schools in Canada. 2.Implement interventions to improve the environmental features of school grounds. 3.Evaluate the health, social, environmental, and financial impacts for students, schools, and surrounding communities associated with the school ground greening interventions.