Susanne Knutsson
Associate professor of caring science
Susanne Knutsson’s research aims to describe and explore what the forest means for health and wellbeing.
FUNDING AWARDED SINCE 2024SEK 979,000
Funders: Södra and Ikea (through the strategic partnership The Bridge), the Werner Foundation
When Susanne Knutsson seeks peace and quiet, she heads to a place she knows well: a spruce forest where soft green moss carpets the ground and, in the distance between the trunks, a small clearing catches the light.
“It’s the silence that draws me there. It creates a sense of peace and stillness that truly resonates”, she says.
In that stillness, she also finds something of the essence of her research. For her, forests are both a personal haven and a field of research.
Unique link between healthcare and the forest
Susanne is an associate professor of caring science, and it is precisely this background that makes her research on forests unique. Not only does she study the health-promoting effects of the forest; she also wants to understand why and how the forest can be used in care and prevention. Drawing on the concerns of caring science – approach, suffering and wellbeing – she seeks “the inner core” of the experience of nature: the qualities of the forest that genuinely help us feel better and that can prompt us to spend time outdoors.
“Today, many of us live in cities and spend much of our time sitting still, which leads to a range of health problems. We know that the forest does us good, but we need better opportunities to get out and spend time in it”, Susanne explains.
If we can find the core that touches us, we will also find the key to better health.
It has been scientifically established that there is a link between nature and wellbeing. Studies point to a whole range of health benefits, such as improved immune function, lower blood pressure and heart rate, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, reduced anxiety and depression, and lowered stress levels.
Yet we seldom make it outdoors. This is why Susanne turns her attention to what we do not yet understand well enough. What forest qualities – the light, the scents, the silence, the sense of space, the setting, the activity – make a difference for different groups, from children to older people?
Interdisciplinary research
In several of her research projects, Susanne works across disciplines, combining physiological measures such as heart rate and blood pressure with interviews, observations and participants’ own photos of the things in the forest they feel contribute to – or detract from – their wellbeing. The results are both measurable and rich in meaning.
“When someone says ‘I want to go back’, there is a drive and a motivation that healthcare can draw on.”
Caring science teaches us that natural environments can be therapeutic in themselves. This means that a quality such as silence, which many say they experience in the forest, is not just a pleasant experience but part of a therapeutic process.
Knowledge is not enough
Susanne’s research highlights an important aspect of the forest’s value – the part that concerns human health and wellbeing. It adds to our understanding of the forest as a resource, where timber, climate benefits and human wellbeing come together as a whole.
“We already know a great deal, but knowledge isn’t enough. We also need to understand and become aware. People need to be moved in order to understand on a deeper level. If we can find the core that touches us, we will also find the key to better health”, Susanne says.
Study examines forest health effects on children
Can lessons held in the forest make children more alert, settled and focused? A study that moves part of the schoolwork to an outdoor classroom among spruces and moss-covered stones is set out to provide the answer.
“We know that nature has positive effects on health and wellbeing, but there’s a lack of research into how the forest affects children in both the short and the long term. This is something we want to change”, says Susanne Knutsson, associate professor of caring science.
Schoolwork in the forest
Behind Ekenässjön School in the municipality of Vetlanda in southern Sweden lies a small woodland area that has now been turned into a “school forest” and an outdoor classroom. Here, pupils in a Year 3 class spend two afternoons a week having lessons in several subjects with the forest as the setting.
“There are clear links between health and nature, and that early contact with nature promotes children’s development and their physical, mental and social health, laying the foundation for spending time in nature later in life”, Susanne says.
The project draws on the pedagogy developed as part of the Swedish Forestry Society’s initiative Skogen i skolan (‘The forest in school’). It is designed as a small-scale intervention and serves as a pilot study in which the researchers follow the pupils’ health, their experience of the forest and what the forest means to them through to Year 6.
To provide a point of comparison, another school in Vetlanda is taking part, where pupils answer the same questionnaire, but do not have lessons outdoors. The project also includes some schools in major cities, allowing researchers to assess whether there are any geographical differences or differences between large and small cities.
Hoping for more energetic, confident and active children
The project is funded by The Bridge – a collaboration between Ikea, Södra and Linnaeus University focusing on innovation and sustainability – and by the Seydlitz MP Foundation. It also involves a unique collaboration between the Department of Health and Caring Sciences and the Department of Forestry and Wood Technology, a combination that is both innovative and crucial if the project is to reach its full potential.
Another distinctive feature of the project is its collaboration with companies associated with the forest. Construction and housing companies, furniture manufacturers, sawmills, and businesses within the forestry and pulp industries visit the school to hold sessions related to what they do and produce. There are many hopes: that children will become more physically active, spend more time outdoors, and develop a greater interest in the forest and its importance to us as humans. That children’s own voices and involvement in matters that concern them can give them a sense of meaning and motivation for a changed perspective and a different lifestyle that promotes health.