Systematic Review: Neurodevelopmental Benefits of Active/Passive School Exposure to Green and/or Blue Spaces in Children and Adolescents.

Today more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas. Children spend about 40 h a week in the school environment. Knowing the influence of school exposure to green/blue spaces could improve the children's health, creating healthier environments and preventing exposure to legal/illegal drugs. This systematic review summarized the main results of published studies on active or passive exposure to green or blue spaces in different domains of child neurodevelopment. In August 2022, five databases were searched and twenty-eight eligible studies were included in the analysis. Cognitive and/or academic performance was the most frequently studied (15/28). Most studies evaluate passive exposure to green/blue spaces (19/28) versus active exposure (9/28). Only three studies addressed the relationship between blue space and neurodevelopment. The main results point toward mixed evidence of a protective relationship between green/blue space exposure and neurodevelopment, especially in improving cognitive/academic performance, attention restoration, behavior, and impulsivity. Renaturalizing school spaces and promoting "greener" capacities for school environmental health could improve children's neurodevelopment. There was great heterogeneity in methodologies and adjustment for confounding factors across studies. Future research should seek a standardized approach to delivering school environmental health interventions beneficial to children's development.

Looking Towards 2030: Strengthening the Environmental Health in Childhood-Adolescent Cancer Survivor Programs.

Childhood and adolescent cancer survivors (CACS) are a high-risk population for non-communicable diseases and secondary carcinogenesis. The Environmental and Community Health Program for Longitudinal Follow-up of CACS in the region of Murcia, Spain, is an ongoing pioneering program that constitutes a model for social innovation. This study aims to present the program tools and protocol as a whole, as well as a profile of the incidence, survival, and spatiotemporal distribution of childhood cancer in the region of Murcia, Spain, using 822 sample cases of cancer diagnosed in children under 15 years of age (1998-2020). While the crude incidence rate across that entire period was 149.6 per 1 million, there was an increase over that time in the incidence. The areas with a higher standardized incidence ratio have shifted from the northwest (1998-2003) to the southeast (2016-2020) region. Overall, the ten-year survival rate for all tumor types was 80.1% over the entire period, increasing the five-year survival rate from 76.1 (1998-2003) to 85.5 (2014-2018). CACS living in areas with very poor outdoor air quality had lower survival rates. Furthermore, integrating environmental health into clinical practice could improve knowledge of the etiology and prognosis, as well as the outcomes of CACS. Finally, monitoring individual carbon footprints and creating healthier lifestyles, alongside healthier environments for CACS, could promote wellbeing, environmental awareness, and empowerment in order to attain Sustainable Development Goals for non-communicable diseases in this population.