University of Essex academic Dr Rachel Bragg receives OBE

Dr Rachel Bragg played a key role in the University of Essex's green exercise research team when it first launched the concept of green exercise – which has since gained interest and support around the globe.

She remains a visiting fellow in the green exercise research team, where she was a senior researcher for 17 years, with research interests including the relationship between nature, human health and mental wellbeing.

Dr Bragg said she feels very proud and delighted to have received an OBE for her work.

She added: “It’s great to get recognition for our inspiring care farming sector and for the amazing work they do to transform people’s lives – nature is more important than ever for our mental health, and we’ll need all the opportunities we can get to help people feel better post Covid.”

There are 24 care farms in Essex and Suffolk and several of them offer placements for Essex occupational therapy students as part of their training.

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Dr Bragg is care farming development manager for the charity Social Farms and Gardens - which promotes care farming and provides supporting services to the 300 care farms in the UK.

She has been actively involved in the development of the care farming sector in the UK for the past 15 years and is a passionate advocate of green care – nature-based treatment interventions for people with a defined need.

Along with her team, and in partnership with charity Thrive, Dr Bragg is delivering the growing care farming project (part of the Government’s Children and Nature Programme), which aims to transform the scale of the care farming sector in England.

“The recognition of my work goes hand in hand with the recognition of the wider care farming and green care sector,” she added.

“We have come a long way in the last 15 years and the OBE will enable me to further promote care farming and to advocate on the behalf of the 300 care farms in the UK and countless providers of nature based interventions, which are enormously beneficial to so many different service user groups.

“There are so many different opportunities out there that we really must ensure that there is a clear and consistent referral mechanism to help people access the best place for them and the sustainable funding for service provision.”

Looking back at her time at Essex Dr Bragg added: “My research work at Essex was very much the groundwork to my current role – working with Professor Jules Pretty in sustainable agriculture in the early days, and with Jules and the wider green exercise research team in launching the concept of green exercise, and working with many different organisations researching green care and care farming."