At Fresh Tracks, we believe that meaningful time spent outdoors enables communities to thrive, especially when we prioritize youth engaged outdoor programming. The Nature of the Outdoors study by the YMCA, for example, found that young people who participated in outdoor programs developed greater thriving capacities than youth engaged in non-outdoor programs. In the course of the Fresh Tracks Youth & Young Adult Wellbeing Measure Project, Black, Indigenous, and Latine youth identified healthy environments, and time outdoors specifically, as being one of seven essential components in defining, assessing, and fostering wellbeing in their respective communities. By centering youth voices and leveraging the outdoors to facilitate youth development, these projects offer replicable models for addressing complex socio-environmental challenges and ensuring holistic development for future generations.
Fresh Tracks Program Coordinator Sage Innerarity (Ione Band of Miwok Indians) presenting at the Nature and Health Conference Poster Session.
Last month, members of the Fresh Tacks team attended the first annual Nature and Health Conference, where we shared these models and strategies for bridging mental health and environmental equity. Held in Houston, TX and co-hosted by the Nature and Health Alliance (NHA) and the Center for Nature and Health, this year’s convening centered on the need for innovative, collaborative solutions which catalyze systems change to solve evolving challenges that limit access to the healing power of the outdoors.
Juan Martinez (Deputy Director at Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, Director and Co-Founder of Fresh Tracks), CJ Goulding (Executive Director of Boyz in the Wood), Sage Innerarity (Program Coordinator at Fresh Tracks).
As Fresh Tracks reimagines and reintroduces the Open Pathways Project – formerly the Outdoor Equity Network– we seek to facilitate society-level change by connecting experts in policy, philanthropy, and programming to solve shared challenges and replicate successes across silos, boundaries, and borders. The Nature and Health Conference offered space to reflect on and define the following core beliefs which guide our work and commitments to creating healthy futures for generations to come:
- Time outside is not a luxury for some, but a necessity for all
As we work to integrate the outdoors into all of our systems and segments of daily life, it is important to remember that access to the outdoors fosters healthy, connected communities. In this way, access to the outdoors is not something that is “nice to have.” Rather, it is essential to our individual and collective health and wellbeing. Investment in and prioritization of outdoor programs, research, and development is an investment in the wellness of our communities, ecosystems, and society at large. This reframing takes seriously the inextricable connection between our wellness and the wellness of the lands, water, and non-human kin with whom we share this world.
- Collaboration is a catalyst for society-level change.
Collaboration was a central theme throughout the conference, and is a particularly salient value which guides the Open Pathways Project’s goal of breaking silos to expand the impact of the outdoors. In his keynote address, President of the REI Cooperative Action Fund at REI Co-Op Marc Berejka reminded us of the importance of recognizing and utilizing our unique gifts in this work. Relying on Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, Berejka emphasized the unique roles of experts, connectors, and trusted storytellers, while recognizing that each must be present in order to not only change systems and structures, but minds and hearts as well.
Utilizing this framework, the Open Pathways Project serves as a connector of experts, builders, and storytellers in service of weaving the outdoors into disconnected sectors and spaces seeking to facilitate health and wellbeing for all. The Open Pathways Project (OPP) is actively building the infrastructure, partnerships, and momentum needed to transform how outdoor experiences are valued, funded, and integrated across systems. But this work cannot be done in isolation. Achieving lasting access to the outdoors requires bold collaboration and sustained investment from funders, policymakers, and community-based organizations alike.
- The outdoors is not simply a tool, but an active agent and facilitator of our collective wellbeing.
In his presentation on Harris County’s health, resilience, and biodiversity, Executive Director of the University of Houston Institute for Ecological Resilience Jaime Gónzalez urged attendees to expand their definition of “community” to include our non-human relations. As an Indigenous woman who grew up in her homelands and grounded in stories of our non-human kin, this call to action was deeply resonant and hope-inspiring. Gónzalez spoke to what myself and many Indigenous peoples have always known to be true: our wellbeing is interwoven with the wellbeing of the lands, waterways, plants, and animals we call kin.
The Open Pathways Project is uniquely grounded in and guided by Indigenous knowledges, and seeks to reflect these teachings in our language and actions. While many conversations about the outdoors frame nature as a tool for fostering wellbeing, we believe that land, water, and non-human kin have agency and equal stake in creating healthy environments and communities. In Theory of Water, Nishnaabe author Leanne Simpson writes that “land and land-based practices are the nest within which we learn our philosophies, laws, ethics, and politics” (Simpson 2025). More than a tool, the outdoors are a facilitator, catalyst, and co-creator of futures in which all of our relations can thrive. As we bring policymakers, philanthropists, and program experts together to solve shared challenges, we also invite and include the outdoors as a teacher and expert to inform our work.
The Nature and Health Conference revealed a clear shift toward cocreated, innovative solutions to our most pressing environmental challenges. Moreover, experts from across the United States gathered based on their shared belief in the outdoors as central to a future in which all people thrive. At Fresh Tracks, we are excited for the Open Pathways Project to contribute to this new movement toward cross-silo collaboration aimed at expanding access to the healing power of the outdoors.