In this episode I’m speaking with Dr Tim Rigg, a GP whose work sits right at the edge of one of the most important questions in healthcare: what does it really mean to help people become well?

We talk about the limits of a medical system that is often brilliant at acute illness and emergency care, but far less equipped to tend to the root causes of chronic stress, disconnection, burnout, and mild to moderate mental health difficulties. And we explore what happens when nature is not treated as a lifestyle extra, but as something that belongs inside the conversation about health.

For me, this conversation feels hopeful because it is grounded. It is not vague, romantic, or wishful. It is about how we create the systems, training, collaborations, and evidence needed so that GPs can confidently offer nature as a first-line response where appropriate - and so that nature-based practitioners, health services, universities, communities, and funders can work together to make this possible across the UK.

At a time when mental health services are stretched, NHS staff are under pressure, and so many people are living with loneliness and disconnection, this conversation asks whether healing might require us to widen the frame.

• Tim speaks from his experience as a GP, bringing together clinical practice, social prescribing, nature connection and a wider understanding of what helps people become well.
• He explains that around 90–95% of healthcare contact happens in primary care, showing just how important GPs are in shaping the first conversation about health, care and prevention.
• He suggests that a very large proportion of people coming to GPs are living with chronic disease, stress, anxiety, depression, isolation or other conditions shaped by the environments and systems they live within.
• The conversation explores the strengths of Western medicine, especially in acute illness, trauma and emergency care, while also asking whether it is less equipped to address root causes, prevention and the conditions of a healthy life.
• Tim shares how the pioneering social prescribing work in Frome helped reveal the importance of community, belonging and purpose in supporting people’s health.
• One striking statistic from Frome was a reported 40% relative reduction in hospital admissions compared with a neighbouring area, suggesting that community-based approaches may have a significant role to play in reducing pressure on the system.
• The episode looks at green prescribing not as simply telling people to “go for a walk”, but as a structured, supported and clinically credible pathway from the GP consultation room into nature-based wellbeing programmes.
• A key part of the emerging model is making it easy and safe for GPs to signpost patients, while trained nature-based practitioners manage screening, safeguarding, delivery and ongoing support.
• The conversation explores why nature-based work may help through regulation of the nervous system, sensory connection, beauty, awe, movement, stillness, meaning, community and relationship with the more-than-human world.
• Tim’s work is also about collaboration, bringing together GPs, Primary Care Networks, nature-based practitioners, social prescribing link workers, universities, funders and local green providers.
• At the heart of the episode is a hopeful question about scale - how do we move from inspiring local projects to a joined-up, evidence-informed, nationally accessible pathway that supports people, practitioners, communities and the NHS?