Texas A&M Health expert featured in documentary about the health benefits of being in nature

Jay Maddock, PhD, has a new credential to add to his long list as one of the world’s top experts on the health benefits of being in nature: movie star.

That’s because he is featured in a documentary that the Redford Center—actor Robert Redford’s environmental philanthropy—expects to release on several streaming platforms early next year.

The outdoor gear giant REI sponsored the film, which focuses on the company’s health and nature movement. Nalini Nadkarni from the University of Utah and Jennifer Roberts from the University of Maryland also will be featured.

“This documentary will help the public understand the relationship between spending time in nature and improved health and—I hope—will also get more people outside,” said Maddock, a Regents Professor at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health.

Maddock is a member of REI’s cooperative action fund advisory board and chairs its Nature and Health Alliance.

These are just two of his many outreach efforts in his journey to worldwide recognition.

The seed for the “a ha!” moment that catapulted Maddock into the health and nature stratosphere was planted in 2014, when he spent a few days with what he deemed the “happiest people in the world.”

“They had a quality that stuck with me, one I wanted to identify and tap into and help others tap into,” he said.

Blending research and recreation in a tropical paradise

Before meeting the world’s happiest people, Maddock already had reason to smile. A rising young star in academia, he earned his PhD in psychology by age 25.

A short-term post-doc led him to the University of Hawaii at Manoa on the island of Oahu in 1999. This morphed into long-term, major administrative roles as both director and chair of the university’s public health program. Along the way, his honors included being named Community Leader of the Year by the Bank of Hawaii and one of the region’s top 40 leaders under 40 by Pacific Business News.

The projects Maddock helped launch—the state-wide Healthy Hawaii Initiative to reduce chronic disease and the county-wide Get Fit Kaua’i coalition to promote physical health, among others—helped Hawaii residents of all ages and fitness levels eat healthier and move more.

“This meant teaching children and their families how to make simple, nutritious meals and sponsoring bicycle share programs—things like that,” he said. “The point was to make good health more accessible and fun for regular people and fitness buffs alike.”

Underpinning the fun activities was serious research, however. One study with which Maddock was involved, for instance, found that by simply moving recess to before lunch, elementary school students wasted less food at school mealtimes and had fewer discipline problems.

“We spend a lot of our time at home, school or the workplace, so it’s important to make these experiences healthier for everyone, wherever they are,” he said.

Like many who live on Oahu, Maddock spent his free time outdoors. For one thing, the climate, landscapes, flora and fauna were in stark contrast to what he left behind in his beloved Rhode Island.

“And for another thing, you can hardly get away from nature on an island that’s got lush green mountains in the middle and the Pacific Ocean always in sight,” he said. “Plus, most of the houses have single-wall construction and no ductwork or air conditioning, so you’re practically immersed in nature even when you’re just sitting in your living room.”

For Maddock, soaking up the sunshine meant putting the cares of his job aside. Science was the furthest thing from his mind.

Lessons from the “world’s happiest people”

That mindset started to shift when Maddock was invited to give the keynote address at the 2014 World Trails Conference in Jeju Island, South Korea.

“I was asked to speak on the benefits of being in nature and found lots of scholarly articles from the 1980s and early 1990s,” he said. “After that, though, the topic seemed to lose steam, and I wondered why that was the case given how interesting and potentially important it was. That really stuck with me.”

The conference brings together people from around the globe who are passionate about hiking and trails—those who build and maintain trails, promote their use and conduct research related to them.

While in Jeju, Maddock got to know the people who oversaw some of the world’s longest and most-loved trails—the Appalachian Trail in the United States, the Camino de Santiago Trail in Spain and the Horn of Africa trail, among others.

“They were the happiest people I had ever met,” Maddock said. “And that, too, stuck with me.”

Leadership leads to successes—and personal sacrifice

In 2015, Maddock was named dean of the Texas A&M University School of Public Health.

“The position appealed to me because Texas A&M takes a social ecological approach to improving the health of communities,” he said, “We get a more complete picture of an individual by also considering the social networks and organizations they are part of and the natural and built environments where they live and work.”

During his time as dean, the school more than doubled student enrollment, increased the number of faculty by 65%, added two graduate degree programs and doubled research expenditures. Maddock was also serving as chair of the National Public Health Preparedness Advisory Group and president of the American Academy of Health Behavior, among other roles.

Although he enjoyed the challenges of leading one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious public health programs, he also paid a price.

“My blood pressure shot up along with my stress level, and I put on weight,” he said. “One day, I looked out my office window and into our barren and unsightly courtyard, and it hit me—I no longer had much of a connection to nature.”

New role unites past work and builds global momentum

And then—out of the blue—an idea came along that changed everything.

It led him to reflect on the hours he spent exploring the outdoors throughout his life and the extraordinarily happy people he got to know in Jeju.

Thanks to Houston Attorney Cynthia Pickett, the seed that was planted within him at World Trails Conference a few years earlier found a way to take root and flourish.

Pickett proposed to Maddock a School of Public Health partnership with Houston Methodist and Texan by Nature. The project would bring experts from Texas A&M, Houston Methodist Hospital and other institutions in the United States and internationally to study the ways that exposure to nature benefits health.

“She put together the concept that had been floating around unformed in the back of my head for several years,” Maddock said.

The result was the new Center for Health & Nature, opened in 2018. The next year, after stepping down as dean, Maddock served as its co-director and today is its director.

The center’s research explores how exposure to nature could reduce the pain and distress of chemotherapy, how parks and other greenspaces could reduce the need for hospitalization among residents in a densely populated urban area, and how doctors might prescribe nature for their patients.

Other initiatives include the installation of a rooftop garden on the new tower at Houston Methodist Hospital and a partnership with the Houston Botanic Garden that resulted in the Nurture by Nature Festival and a new tour of the garden that focuses on the science of health and nature.

Word about this innovative new concept soon got out, and media platforms worldwide sought interviews with center experts.

Maddock alone has been featured on The Today Show and—repeatedly—on CNN, as well as in publications such as Prevention and Good Housekeeping. In addition, he has lectured in countries including Australia, South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, El Salvador and Brazil, and held honorary professorships at two universities in China.

“It has been gratifying indeed to see this work take shape and resonate so widely,” he said. “And it’s exciting to consider what the next few years could bring.”

Adversity confirms nature’s essential role in health

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down workplaces and gyms in the spring of 2020, Maddock and friend Debra Kellstedt took up another activity: hiking.

“Like most people, getting used to that upside-down, uncertain world was quite an adjustment,” he said. “We soon found ourselves needing to get out and about to restore some sense of exploration and discovery, so we dusted off our hiking boots and hit the trail.”

They hiked every other weekend or so. Sometimes they trekked just a mile on trails near their home in central Texas, and other times 10 or more miles through places like the scenic and rugged Big Bend National Park in far West Texas.

They went with two other friends and found themselves ending each day at a local brew pub.

“We had two beers at each place and talked about what we liked about the route and what was especially interesting or fun,” said Maddock, who is partial to IPAs (“I like my hops!”).

The pandemic made him realized that time in nature is not a mere add-on.

“COVID taught me that I need nature for my mental and physical health—in fact, it’s essential,” he said.

But even more than that, the pandemic experience helped Maddock realize that his early work in Hawaii—based on his philosophy that good health is for everybody and can be fun and easy—had come full circle.

Nature’s benefits are closer than you think

Not only has work by scholars at the Center for Health & Nature and elsewhere affirmed this philosophy, but research has also found that these benefits are easier to achieve than most people realize.

“Being in nature can be as simple as spending a few minutes in a neighborhood greenspace, or even having houseplants around your home,” he said.

Adding physical activity while outdoors is what Maddock calls the “Reese’s peanut butter cup” of health, because it offers a double dose of things most people enjoy. But physical activity isn’t required to get the benefits.

“Even sitting outside for as little as 10 minutes has been found to reduce stress, lower blood pressure and strengthen your immune system,” he said.

And there are mental health benefits, too, including a better ability to pay attention and less “rumination,” or excessive dwelling on specific thoughts or memories, especially unpleasant ones, he said.

“Like most aspects of life, achieving better health is a matter of balance,” he said.

The end of the pandemic brought Maddock’s hiking adventures to a close—for now—but those wanting to know more can get details in Maddock and Kellstedt’s upcoming book, Texas Hikes and Brews: A Rambler’s Guide to a Perfect Day, which will be released by the Texas A&M Press in November.

In the meantime, Maddock is as busy as ever, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you’re lucky, though, you might find this new movie star outside his office at Texas A&M, relaxing in one of the bright blue deck chairs in the once-ugly courtyard that he helped transform into a lush oasis.