THE MOM FACTOR
Mothers are more powerful than they realize, according to Dr. Melissa Lem. As president-elect of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), the Vancouver physician’s bio states she is an internationally recognized expert on the nature-health connection. “My son and the beautiful landscapes in this country are the most wonderful things I've ever seen in my life. And I'm really inspired to protect them,” she said, adding that’s how she got involved in the park prescriptions program for the BC Parks Foundation. “As a physician, I'm trying to inspire my fellow health-care professionals to prescribe nature to their patients to connect them to nature to both improve their well-being and also inspire them to want to protect the planet.” And it’s working. The program has motivated more than 6,000 health-care professionals to register to prescribe nature to their patients .