Pilot grant recipient turned award-winning researcher

Did you know that Nature and Human Health Utah awards pilot grants every other year to researchers and practitioners who are interested in better understanding the health benefits of spending time outside and increasing access to the outdoors? In 2021, NHH-UT awarded four $10,000 grants, and in 2023, over $70,000 was awarded to nine researchers and community practitioners—including Carly Knudson, a current PhD student in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism.

Carly was recently awarded 2025 Best Paper from the American Association of Park and Recreation Administration for her thesis “Relationships Between Socioecological Factors, Time Spent in Nature, and Mental Health Outcomes in Undergraduate College Students.” We reached out to Carly to learn more about this project and what this award means to her, check out what she shared with us below:

Could you briefly describe the focus of your thesis and what inspired you to explore this topic? My thesis was titled “Relationships between sociodemographic factors, time in nature and mental health outcomes in undergraduate college students.” A mouthful, I know! It focused on the quantitative portion of a larger project that was funded by NHH-UT that also included interviews. The gist of it explored the relationship between time in nature and health outcomes within a college student campus, with the idea in mind that nature and health is likely experienced differently across campus populations and individuals, but limited research integrates that perspective.

I am passionate about increasing access to nature spaces and access to equitable health opportunities and wanted to contribute to conversations that ask important questions like the ones posed by other leading nature and health experts and researchers. For example, is nature always “good” for people? In what context and for whom?

What were some of your most surprising or significant findings about the connections between socioecological factors, time in nature, and mental health in college students? Why do you think it’s important to study these relationships in undergraduate populations? We had students self-report time in nature over the past week, as well as anxiety and depression symptoms and subjective health. Surprisingly and contrary to what I hypothesized, nature time and mental health symptoms were not related in our sample, but there was a relationship with subjective health.

While anxiety and depression has a variety of measures related to mental health diagnoses defined by clinicians, subjective health is a single measure that literally just asks students to “rate their health on a scale of 1-5.” It allows students to conceptualize what health means to them, and interestingly enough is a well-validated measure that is often used in public health research. I haven’t seen many studies that incorporate that in the nature and health literature, and brought up a lot of cool follow-up questions for me.

Further, I did an analysis that considered students’ sociodemographic identities (race/ ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, parent income levels), and reiterated that there were differences in health, nature use, the relationship between the two. While these findings aren’t totally novel or surprising, they help remind us that even on college campuses- a space that has greater access to nature and health resources than much of the populations- disparities can still occur and are important to pay attention to in how we design interventions and research projects.  

How did the NHH-UT Pilot Grant support your work, and what role did it play in helping you achieve this recognition? NHH-UT was integral to my ability to successfully complete this project! Not only was I able to use the funds to be able to pay participants (an important part of equitable research), but I was also able to work and collaborate with a larger team of fellow graduate students and faculty to perform the project on a larger scale than I would have been able to accomplish alone. My team and my meetings with NHH-Utah staff (shout out to Myra!) helped me to check in with progress and timelines, bounce ideas and strategies off each other, and consider ways to apply my work and connect with other community members and researchers doing similar work.

What’s next for your research or career, and how do you plan to build on this work? While I’m early in my career, I think this project was a great stepping stone into networks, areas of future research, and cross-disciplinary opportunities. I’m working right now as a research assistant in the Youth Development and Outdoor Education Lab on campus with Dr. Lisa Meerts-Bransdma, Dr. Bryn Spielvogel (both of whom helped with my project) and Dr. Jim Sibthorp on projects that continue to work on increasing access to nature spaces and how to do so in inclusive manners. I’m also working on publishing my thesis into a smaller journal article to be disseminated into the public and hope to keep collaborating with other researchers and practitioners to think about how to actually integrate these findings into student programming and opportunities on campus.

How do you hope your research will inform campus mental health strategies or access to green spaces? I think considering this project in combination with the interviews that students were gracious enough to provide further insight with, is that “nature” and “health” mean different things and are prioritized differently for different people. While some of us might think that the perfect de-stressor is to get up into the mountains alone and “get away”, for others it might just be to lay in the grass in president’s circle with friends, or to volunteer with a local community group cleaning up trash on local trails or providing food access through community gardens. And for some of us, even taking five minutes between classes to notice the fresh air and sunshine can give us the mood boost we need! The important thing is to recognize that we need a variety of opportunities for all students, and to emphasize that these things don’t need to look a certain way to access the benefits. The less we can stigmatize and gatekeep the “right” way to do nature and health, the more likely it is to connect with a wider range of students.

If you are interested in learning about projects like Carly’s consider attending Nature and Human Health Utah’s upcoming conference, where 4 pilot grant recipients will be sharing the findings from their projects. Additionally, we will be announcing another round of pilot grant funding.