Celebrating the world’s first social prescribing day

Integrated Health and Social Care in the United States: A Decade of Policy Progress

“…Globally, this model of linking patients with non-medical services for social needs has been coined “social prescribing” and is often associated with primary care [ 65 ]. In March 2019, 11 countries celebrated the world’s first Social Prescribing Day, including Finland, UK, Brazil, and Canada [ 66 ]. There are important distinctions between American social prescribing schemes and those from other countries.…”

Establishing Internationally Accepted Conceptual and Operational Definitions of Social Prescribing Through Expert Consensus: A Delphi Study

“…There is a lack of standard guidelines and agreement in the literature as to what constitutes an expert for Delphi studies. [36,37] For this study, experts were defined according to the following criteria: (1) Person involved with the Social Prescribing Network; or (2) Person involved with the Social Prescribing Youth Network; or (3) Person involved with the Global Social Prescribing Alliance; or (4) Person involved with the National Academy for Social Prescribing; or (5) Person involved with the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing; or (6) Student involved with any national social prescribing student group; or (7) Author of academic or grey literature on social prescribing, even if not labelled as "social prescribing"; or (8) Researcher involved in social prescribing, even if not labelled as "social prescribing"; or (9) Health care provider involved in social prescribing, even if not labelled as "social prescribing"; or (10) Link worker involved in social prescribing, even if not labelled as "link worker" or "social prescribing"; or (11) Patient involved in social prescribing, even if not labelled as "social prescribing"; or (12) Health care administrator or manager tasked with overseeing the use of social prescribing, even if not labelled as "social prescribing". Furthermore, since this study was in English, only those who could speak, read, and write English were eligible to participate in this study.…”

“…[8] Furthermore, annual events are held by the social prescribing community to celebrate social prescribing around the world, including the Social Prescribing Network Conference and Social Prescribing Day, which began in 2016 and 2019 respectively. [9,10] Additionally, a global network of student champions has emerged to build the social prescribing student movement -this began with the launch of the UK student group in 2017 and recently expanded to include student groups in Australia, Canada, Japan, Portugal, Singapore, and the US, which led to the creation of the Social Prescribing International Student Movement Framework in 2021 [3] and the launch of the Global Social Prescribing Student Council in 2022. Most recently, as a way to foster the implementation of social prescribing, the World Health Organization released a social prescribing toolkit and online training module.…”

Negotiating Complexity: Challenges to Implementing Community-Led Nature-Based Solutions in England Pre- and Post-COVID-19

“…Social prescribing, as a component of personalized care, generally involves referring individuals or households from health care settings to non-clinical community services provided by the voluntary community and social enterprise sectors (VCSE), to participate in activities to improve their physical, mental and social health and wellbeing [ 2 ]. It was first popularized in the UK and has been implemented in more than a dozen countries over the last decade, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, Japan, Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK, USA, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Spain [ 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 ]. As a type of social prescribing, green social prescribing (GSP)—defined as “the use of nature-based activities for improving physical and mental health” [ 8 ]—is supported by government policy in England [ 9 ], with a GBP 4 million investment in 2020 to embed GSP into communities [ 10 ].…”