A review of Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD) and its disproportionate impacts on Latinx populations

Abstract

The term ‘built environment’ garnered a lot of attention in the last few decades for making the link between community design and health impacts. It also highlighted how access to green spaces, which has been correlated with positive public health outcomes, is disproportionately unavailable to Latinx communities. With the renaissance of the term Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD), it is fitting to examine the literature through a term that aims at identifying the etiology of this multi-faceted environmental justice issue. We conducted a review of the literature associated with NDD along with surrogate terms to understand the scope of its usage and applicability, as well as to examine NDD through an equity lens. We performed two searches, one focused on NDD and one on green spaces in Latinx communities to identify the research that has investigated green spaces through an equity perspective. We found that there is a dearth of primary research on the topic. This was best illustrated by the difficulty in finding articles on PubMed that explicitly mention NDD in Latinx communities. A strong body of research exists that indicates adequate access to greenspace is associated with many health benefits. However, future research efforts should focus on evaluating the health implications of NDD on Latinx communities so that this public health issue can be addressed head-on.