Dr. Frances Kuo is currently a faculty member at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she directs the multi-disciplinary Landscape and Human Health Laboratory. Her background is in cognitive psychology (M.A., University of California, Berkeley) and environmental psychology (Ph.D., University of Michigan).

Dr. Kuo’s research has examined links between natural features of the environment and human health, particularly the impacts of urban greenspace on both individual mental health and healthy neighborhood functioning. In a series of studies conducted in Chicago public housing beginning in 1993, for which she and her collaborators received the Environmental Design Research Association’s Achievement Award, her research teams have found compelling evidence that greenspace promotes health across a variety of indices:  reduced aggression, more effective patterns of coping, enhanced cognitive functioning and self-control, greater adult supervision of children, healthier patterns of children’s play, stronger ties among neighbors, enhanced territorial functioning and local social control, lower rates of graffiti and litter, and lower rates of violent and property crime. More recently, she and her student, Dr. Andrea Faber Taylor, received a major grant from the U.S. Forest Service to examine some of these same outcomes in individuals suffering from Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). 

An enduring theme in Dr. Kuo’s work has been the focus on environment and health in the context of vulnerable populations and settings – e.g., poverty, children, low-income single mothers, and children with AD/HD. Vulnerable populations are important foci in their own right; moreover, they may serve as particularly sensitive indicators of the relationship between healthy ecosystems and human health in the larger population. In the future, Dr. Kuo hopes to extend her research to another vulnerable population, older adults, by exploring how greenspace impacts prolonged vitality, both through its direct psychological effects and through its encouragement of outdoor exercise. 

Dr. Kuo regularly gives invited testimony to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture’s National Urban & Community Forestry Advisory Council, and she recently served as a consultant to the CDC on developing a national research agenda on community design and health. Her work has received national and international recognition, with keynote and invited talks at the Society of American Forests, the Society of Municipal Arborists, the Institute on Planning and Zoning, the American Community Gardening Association, the International Horticultural Congress, the Environmental Design Research Association, and the International Congress of Applied Psychology. The Salt Lake City Olympic Committee highlighted her work as a part of its “Healthy Environments, Healthy People” theme for the 2001 Games. 

Dr. Kuo’s research has had impacts across the U.S. In New England, the Rhode Island Urban & Community Forestry Advisory Council has used this work to successfully argue for new municipal tree ordinances in over two dozen communities. In Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune, Dr. Kuo and her colleagues’ work was instrumental in the City’s $10 million tree planting project. On a national level, Dr. Kuo’s work has been integral to the adoption of an urban forestry resolution at the 2002 U.S. Congress of Mayors.

Frances E. Kuo

Human-Environment Research Laboratory

1103 South Dorner Drive

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Urbana, Illinois

http://www.nres.uiuc.edu/faculty/directory/kuo_f.html