Empowering Individuals with Promoting Health & Nature.
Where Medicine Meets the Mountain
At Oak Mountain Outdoor Healthcare, we’re redefining what it means to heal.
By blending professional clinical care with transformative outdoor experiences—skiing, kayaking, hiking, mountain biking, mindfulness in nature, and more—we help individuals prevent and manage chronic mental and physical conditions through the restorative power of the outdoors.
We believe the outdoors is more than a backdrop—it’s a catalyst for healing.
Our evidence-based programs integrate traditional therapy with nature-based interventions such as skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, ice skating, paddle boarding, canoeing, kayaking, hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, bird watching, forest bathing, and mindfulness in nature.
This holistic approach strengthens both mind and body, improving prevention and management strategies for chronic disease while restoring connection, vitality, and purpose.
Who We Are
Oak Mountain Outdoor Health Care (OMOHC) is a Value-Based Outdoor Health Care (VBOHC) provider and research organization in Eden, Utah, integrating nature-based interventions with traditional treatment to prevent and manage mental and physical chronic diseases.
Our mission is to advance healthcare reform by demonstrating how environmental engagement improves outcomes, equity, and quality of life.
Core Vision
OMOHC seeks to create an independent research and education center that studies how nature-based modalities, such as mindfulness and outdoor expeditions, affect stress, depression, anxiety, diabetes, and other chronic illnesses.
By linking genomic medicine, neuroscience, and systems theory, our organization aims to establish a scientific foundation for Outdoor Health Care as a legitimate, reimbursable healthcare model.
Research & Method
Initial studies focus on 10-day nature-based expeditions examining how mindfulness and outdoor experiences reduce symptoms and reshape neural pathways.
Research will employ partnerships with Universities, Healthcare systems, Community Organizations, and Public Health Policy for participant screening and genomic data collection, to build an Outdoor Healthcare bio bank.
Strategic Objectives
Combine nature-based and traditional treatment to improve prevention and management of chronic disease.
Develop training and supervision programs for VBOHC nature-based practitioners.
Create research blueprints and provider guidelines for scalable clinical implementation.
Build alliances with hospitals, insurers, and policymakers to integrate Outdoor Health Care into value-based payment systems.
Long-Term Goals
Establish Eden as a national hub for Outdoor Health Research and Policy.
Promote health equity and economic stability by expanding access to outdoor-based care.
Generate evidence to support healthcare system redesign—reducing redundancy, improving outcomes, and empowering clients to co-produce their own health.
In essence, Oak Mountain Outdoor Health Care pioneers a systemic, research-driven transformation of healthcare—anchoring prevention, wellness, and chronic disease management in the therapeutic power of nature.
Oak Mountain Outdoor Healthcare Research Organization Proposal
Oak Mountain Outdoor Health Care is a Value Based Outdoor Health Care provider and research organization that studies the impact of nature-based interventions on mental and physical chronic disease with a focus on how to better improve health outcomes within the hospital/health care delivery system. We combine traditional treatment with nature-based interventions to understand more specifically, nature’s impact in the prevention and management of mental and physical chronic disease (any illness that is reoccurring and persists, impairing personal, professional and social functioning). We would like to study nature-based interventions in a variety of contexts to learn more about chronic disease, genomic medicine and how nature impacts both prevention and management of chronic disease.
Our nature-based, systemic approach to understanding disease; we hope will help guide health care towards new discoveries with a fresh lens.
Value Based Health Care focuses on outcomes and results, incentivizing all aspects of the health care delivery system to improve individual and population health. It connects employers, patients, payers, clinicians, and policy makers to reinvent health looking towards solutions of efficient, effective health care for all.
Value Based Outdoor Health Care takes Value Based Health Care a step further and combines traditional treatment with nature-based interventions to increase the understanding of disease from a neurological, systemic and genomic perspective.
In support of society, families, and individuals we co-produce health with the client with a focus on prevention first using the foundation of nature.
Summary
Oak Mountain Outdoor Health Care is creating an independent education and research organization that evaluates the efficacy of Value Based Outdoor Health Care in a variety of contexts to understand more about how nature-based interventions affect the incidence and management of mental and physical chronic disease.
We will begin to study and try to understand in more detail how a systemic nature-based approach combined with traditional treatment can be more efficient and effective in the prevention and management of complex chronic illnesses such as chronic stress, diabetes, chronic depression, and neuro-degeneration.
Proposed Project
Oak Mountain Outdoor Health Care will provide support, education, training, and supervision to nature-based practitioners, internationally.
Our Education, Training & Research Center will be located at 3732 E. 1950 N. in Eden, Utah of Ogden Valley.
We have paved and maintained trails throughout our valley (Trails of Northern Utah receives grants to maintain and mark our trails clearly).
We have Pineview Reservoir, and Causey Reservoir for water recreation both summer and winter.
Snowbasin Ski Resort, Powder Mountain Ski Resort, and Nordic Valley Ski Resort, for summer and winter outdoor activities and a Nordic ski park for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.
We are a designated international dark sky park, perfect for stargazing and enjoying the cosmos.
We are also home to a wide variety of animal species in their natural habitat with plenty of opportunities to enjoy observing our wild life.
Our facility boarders National Forest Service land just below Ben Lomand and James Peak on one side and Nordic Valley Ski Resort on the other side.
For projects requiring longer more intense outdoor backpacking experiences we have access to Capitol Reef National Park and Fish Lake National Forest, a more rural area in South Central Utah.
We use nature-based interventions such as; paddle boarding, canoeing, kayaking, hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, bird watching, rock hounding, forest bathing, back packing, mindfulness in nature etc. combined with traditional treatment to improve prevention and management strategies of mental and physical, non-communicable disease.
We are building a team of nature-based researchers, internationally, to contribute to nature-based intervention research design and implementation: looking further into how nature-based treatments affect mental and physical chronic disease from a systemic and genomic perspective.
We believe the environment is crucial in reducing the risk of reinforcing disease.
We use detailed research design intention with a specific research focus to create a foundation of Outdoor Health Care to understand physical and mental chronic illnesses and how we can utilize nature-based treatments to improve opportunities for better health care delivery, improving population health and the economy, as we develop provider blueprints for providers to follow in the implementation of Outdoor Health Care.
We will take a closer look at precursors to disease such as stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms and how nature-based interventions can begin to create new pathways to manage symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress and how this effects the prevention and management of more complex chronic diseases.
Specific Aim
We would like to begin studying 10-day nature-based expeditions in a variety of contexts to understand how we can increase nature-based care delivery and more competence in treatment combining traditional treatment with nature modalities to improve the workforce, the economy, and the population. Our hypothesis is that 10-day nature-based expeditions can increase efficiency and effectiveness in both prevention and management of chronic disease by increasing the intensity of treatment while minimizing disruption of everyday responsibilities. 10-day nature expeditions would require missing only one week of work which may be beneficial to consumers, employers, and insurers.
Background and Significance
The Outdoor Behavioral Health Care center has studied the effects of long-term nature-based interventions such as 30 plus days of Wilderness Therapy Treatment for addiction and a variety of mental health concerns. We want to understand how to create efficiency 10-day programs for the purpose of creating awareness of early symptoms of chronic disease and prevention and implementation of management strategies using nature and genomics as the foundation for both mental and physical health.
Long Term Research Objective
To study nature-based interventions in a variety of contexts to learn more about how nature-based interventions affect chronic disease prevention and management both mental and physical.
Critical Evaluation of Existing Knowledge
The current body of research is primarily focused on Outdoor Therapy and substance abuse and co-occurring mental illnesses. There is a growing body of evidence for Nature Based Therapies and health and wellness related topics such as stress reduction and management. We would like to extend findings of nature-based interventions specifically in the concentration of chronic disease prevention and management to understand more about chronic disease from a genomic, neurological perspective as well as how nature influences proactive health in the co-coordination of physical and mental health, as the two are inextricably linked.
New Methodology Advantage over Existing Methodologies
Journal Pilot studies can help to understand implicit and explicit systemic feedback processes in more detail. This will help to understand nature-based interventions and genomic medicine, within contexts of etiology, phenomenology, pathology, dynamics, and effectiveness in prevention, management, and treatment of mental and physical chronic disease.
Collaborative strategies are important between researchers, primary health, social service, environmental management, and multiple other sectors to promote health and prevention based on a socio-ecological approach to environmental sustainability (Pryor et. al., 2006).
Vision
To create a Value Based Outdoor Health Care Research Organization to promote Specific Value Based Outdoor Health Care Practices and Policy of Nature Based Interventions that can further the understanding of efficacy of treatment using nature-based interventions for the purpose of prevention and management of chronic disease from a neurological, and genomic perspective.
Goal
Our goal is to take a solution focused approach to focusing on healthy behaviors using nature-based interventions as an opportunity to recreate individual’s behavior patterns both physiologically and psychologically by combining Value Based Outdoor Health Care with traditional treatment methods to co-create health with the client rather than focusing on and reinforcing problems. Our hope is that this proposal will create conversations and networks within the community of health care policy, healthcare stakeholders, major insurance companies and evidence informed nature-based health practices within Utah, to move the field of Value Based Outdoor Health Care into a more supported health care access in the United States. Optimally, to increase universal understanding through evidence supported research initiatives within the community to further the field of nature-based interventions, genomic medicine, and neurological research in the field of Nature and Health, Life Sciences and Healthcare.
Specific Significance
Creating a research organization to promote nature-based interventions in support of primary care and behavioral care services can guide growth in population health in a safe, effective, and evidence informed way. This changes what is being reinforced within the individual and the society to recreate patterns of health.
This will create a framework and foundation to promote collaborative research efforts with other Research Informed Nature Based Intervention Programs to promote Research, Practice and Policy for Nature Based Health Practices.
Task Objectives
Using Nature-Based Interventions, ongoing Nature-Based Research and Development, Education and Training to:
· Increase Health Equity
· Decrease Health Disparities
· Increase Population Health with a focus on chronic disease management and prevention