This episode of PDACast is brought to you by Nationwide Children's Hospital. Hello, everyone and welcome once again to Pediacast. It is a pediatric podcast for moms and dads. It is a pediatric podcast for moms and dads. This is Dr. Mike coming to you from the campus of nationwide children's hospital. We're in Columbus, Ohio. It's episode 578. We're calling this one digging into nature. I want to welcome all of you to the program.

So we have a fun and important topic for you this week as we explore the role of nature

for the physical and emotional well-being of kids, teenagers, and also adults.

And by nature, I mean just what you think.

Getting outside and exploring the great outdoors, which isn't quite as easy as it used to be. I mean, there's really a lot of

competition for our time and attention, school, screens, sports, family functions, clubs,

all of the other scheduled stuff that we do.

And there are fewer opportunities to explore outside due to lack of funding for parks and recreation in many communities,

crime and other safety concerns and other places, and sometimes just not knowing what is available in your area in terms of parks and programs. And here's

a thing, despite all of the challenges, getting outside and digging into nature is super

important for reasons that we will soon discover together. So it is important to come up with a plan

and overcome any challenges that might be in place in your particular community or

for your family. And we have a couple of terrific guests joining us to walk through all of this.

Dr. Pugia Tandon, she is a general pediatrician at Seattle Children's Hospital. And Dr. Danette

Glassie, also in Seattle, she leads Best Start Washington and their Project Nature.

And together, they wrote a book published by the American Academy of Pediatrics called

Digging Into Nature, Outdoor Adventures for Happier and Healthier Kids.

So they will be with us shortly.

Before we get to them, I did want to mention that PediCast has won a couple of big awards from FeedSpot.

We are the number two pediatric podcast in the country among 15 contenders, so we're proud of that.

And we're the number one best hospital podcast with 25 contenders, and that includes not just pediatrics, but adult hospitals as well.

So we're really, really proud to be the number one best hospital podcast according to FeedSpot.

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