“Social Prescribing” is a means for tackling poor physical health, mental health and wellbeing without, or alongside, the prescription of pharmaceutical drugs. It is a means of referring patients in primary care to activities within the community that will improve their health and wellbeing. Social prescribing schemes cover a wide-range of activities and programmes ranging from physical activities through culture programmes to civic engagement activities, such as volunteering. It can include exercise classes, art and music therapy, gardening and support groups,

 

BACKGROUND

Social Prescribing has its roots in Stockport (UK) in 1995 and a London community health centre in the same decade and has been expanding since then. Interest in the mechanism particularly took off following the UK government’s 2006 White Paper “Our health, our care, our say” which highlighted the potential of the scheme. The UK National Health Service (NHS) subsequently incorporated social prescribing into their health, well-being and prevention policies, outlined in the “NHS five year forward view” in 2014 and the “General practice forward view” in 2016. As a result, schemes are currently running across the UK. In the EU context, social prescribing schemes can be most widely found in Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain.

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BENEFITS

Social prescribing is proven to have an impact on treatment and management of disease as well as promoting prevention of disease. It also has a social value by generally reducing the pressure on family doctors, by redistributing health concerns caused by predominantly social issues to non-clinical local groups who have knowledge and expertise in their area of social engagement.