Social prescribing
Social prescribing
Using the strength of the third sector to promote health, tackle inequalities and reduce NHS costs.
In the UK, there are 307,000,000 GP consultations yearly putting enormous pressure on primary care.
Social prescribing (SP) enables a GP to refer patients with health and/or social issues to a ‘link worker’ who provides ‘holistic’ support to patients and refers them to mutually agreed non-clinical activities (e.g. walking groups) and social services (e.g. housing), typically provided by the third sector.
UEL’s contribution to social prescribing
- 2014 - Evaluating SP in Newham.
- 2015 - Creating an evidence base for SP with the first large scale evaluation of SP in 2015. The evaluation showed positive results from qualitative interviews and impact on reduction in GP consultations and medication use.
- 2016 - Leading the creation of the national Social Prescribing Network (SPN) to improve the evidence base and examine models of SP. SPN currently boasts more than 5000 members.
- 2017-2020 - Leading on a wide range of evaluations and reviews funded by NHS, DHSC, Greater London Authority and local authorities which showed a strong positive impact of SP on mental wellbeing. This significantly contributed to the decision of the NHS to expand SP nationally in 2019. Resulting in, the recruitment of 1,000 link workers to support 900,000 people across England.
- 2020 - Developing training for link workers (9 cohorts across England and Wales) and setting up the social prescribing youth network (SPYN) to support research and evaluation in social prescribing for children and young people.
- 2021 - Facilitating the spread of social prescribing internationally (e.g. COPE across Italy and Portugal) and through research on community-led organisations (with four universities and 15 community-led organisations - Common Health Assets project) and book editing with 7 countries internationally.
- 2023 – Feasibility of Social Prescribing in Malaysia (Dr Ainul Hanafiah).
- 2024 – edited (Dr M Bertotti) the first book in the world on social prescribing drawing on case studies from England, Wales, the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Portugal, Canada and Singapore. Edited by Springer.