LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Since 2018, the University of Louisville and the Nature Conservancy nonprofit planted over 8,000 trees and shrubs across the city. Wyandotte Park got a lot of those plantings as part of The Green Heart Project.
By comparing health data from neighborhoods residents with the enhanced greenery to neighborhoods without it, researchers are trying figure out how planting these trees can close the gap on certain health benefits like lowering inflammation. It's a reduction of at least 13%, according to a recently-released study of the ongoing research project.
"This study is telling us that, indeed, trees mean healthier people and healthier cities. Trees are indeed medicine," UofL President Kim Schatzel said to applause.
"So if we work on the scale that we've done here for the entire city, that would be a huge benefit. We can only think what it would be for the entire country," Dr. Aruni Bhatnagar, director of the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute at UofL, said.
In a comparison photo provided by the university, you can see the new green barrier added along the Watterson Expressway. That's in Toni Smith's backyard.
"They even took hair clippings, toenail clippings, all kinds of things," she explained.
She's one of the people university researchers studied who lives near the enhanced green space.
"And it did help a little bit with pollution," Smith said, "I think definitely, overall, it helped enhance our neighborhood."
Shecola Bryant is living proof of the improvement, even if she lives a few blocks outside the intervention zone where crews planted new growth.
"I deal with COPD and asthma and it has helped my breathing and everything," she said. "I've shared all of this with my lung doctor and my primary care and even they see an improvement."
An improvement project leaders hope to replicate in Louisville and abroad. With $4.6 million in newly-granted funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, they just might.
In addition to the six-year results released today, the project has long-term plans for studying the health impacts of an expanded tree canopy, extending out for the next ten years.
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