Skip to main content

Main menu

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers

User menu

  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in

Search

  • Advanced search
British Journal of General Practice
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
  • RCGP
    • BJGP for RCGP members
    • BJGP Open
    • RCGP eLearning
    • InnovAIT Journal
    • Jobs and careers
  • Subscriptions
  • Alerts
  • Log in
  • Follow bjgp on Twitter
  • Visit bjgp on Facebook
  • Blog
  • Listen to BJGP podcast
  • Subscribe BJGP on YouTube
Intended for Healthcare Professionals
British Journal of General Practice

Advanced Search

  • HOME
  • ONLINE FIRST
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • ALL ISSUES
  • AUTHORS & REVIEWERS
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • BJGP LIFE
  • MORE
    • About BJGP
    • Conference
    • Advertising
    • eLetters
    • Alerts
    • Video
    • Audio
    • Librarian information
    • Resilience
    • COVID-19 Clinical Solutions
Editorials

Social prescribing: where is the evidence?

Kerryn Husk, Julian Elston, Felix Gradinger, Lynne Callaghan and Sheena Asthana
British Journal of General Practice 2019; 69 (678): 6-7. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp19X700325
Kerryn Husk
Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Plymouth, Plymouth.
Roles: Senior Research Fellow
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Julian Elston
Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Plymouth, Plymouth.
Roles: Research Fellow
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Felix Gradinger
Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Plymouth, Plymouth.
Roles: Research Fellow
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Lynne Callaghan
Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Plymouth, Plymouth.
Roles: Senior Research Fellow
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Sheena Asthana
Faculty of Business, University of Plymouth, Plymouth.
Roles: Professor
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • Article
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF
Loading

SOCIAL PRESCRIBING PROLIFERATION

Social prescribing is the topic of the moment. Many national organisations and individuals from policy, practice, and academia (such as NHS England, the RCGP, the Mayor of London, and National Institute for Health Research) are rightly advocating social prescriptions as an important way to expand the options available for GPs and other community-based practitioners to provide individualised care for people’s physical and mental health through social interventions. No robust figures exist but it is thought that around 20% of patients consult their GP for primarily social issues, given this and the driving forces of an ageing population, increased complex health and social needs, and increasing demand on services, social prescribing is rapidly gaining popularity.

As a concept and a model for delivering health and social interventions, social prescribing has proliferated without a concomitant evidence base.1 This is partly due to resource limitations on evaluators and partly due to difficulties in conceptualising what social prescribing is and what good evidence for a complex service might look like. Here, we briefly outline different models of social prescribing, the current evidence base and its limitations, explore problems relating to what constitutes good evidence, and discuss some potential ways forward.

An immediate difficulty is the range of activity that the term ‘social prescribing’ embraces. Such heterogeneity is a function of social prescribing being the demand-driven formalisation of referrals to existing community services and organisations, which is necessarily locally different. More generally, at one extreme there are narrow interventions that focus on one clinical area and aim to prevent or reduce progression to chronic disease. Such interventions tend to include targeted life-style interventions (for example physical activity, healthy eating or cooking), medicines management or group mentoring, and are typically accessed through the healthcare system. At the other extreme, a large number of schemes are …

View Full Text
Back to top
Previous ArticleNext Article

In this issue

British Journal of General Practice: 69 (678)
British Journal of General Practice
Vol. 69, Issue 678
January 2019
  • Table of Contents
  • Index by author
Download PDF
Article Alerts
Or,
sign in or create an account with your email address
Email Article

Thank you for recommending British Journal of General Practice.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person to whom you are recommending the page knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Social prescribing: where is the evidence?
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from British Journal of General Practice
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from British Journal of General Practice.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Social prescribing: where is the evidence?
Kerryn Husk, Julian Elston, Felix Gradinger, Lynne Callaghan, Sheena Asthana
British Journal of General Practice 2019; 69 (678): 6-7. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp19X700325

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero

Share
Social prescribing: where is the evidence?
Kerryn Husk, Julian Elston, Felix Gradinger, Lynne Callaghan, Sheena Asthana
British Journal of General Practice 2019; 69 (678): 6-7. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp19X700325
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley

Jump to section

  • Top
  • Article
    • SOCIAL PRESCRIBING PROLIFERATION
    • EVALUATING SOCIAL PRESCRIBING
    • DIFFICULTIES IN GENERATING EVIDENCE
    • Acknowledgments
    • Notes
    • REFERENCES
  • Info
  • eLetters
  • PDF

More in this TOC Section

  • Global primary care as an incubator for good ethical practice
  • Culture, migration, Brexit, and COVID-19: managing the mental health of patients from Central and Eastern Europe
  • Detecting ovarian cancer in primary care: can we do better?
Show more Editorials

Related Articles

Cited By...

Intended for Healthcare Professionals

BJGP Life

BJGP Open

 

@BJGPjournal's Likes on Twitter

 
 

British Journal of General Practice

NAVIGATE

  • Home
  • Current Issue
  • All Issues
  • Online First
  • Authors & reviewers

RCGP

  • BJGP for RCGP members
  • BJGP Open
  • RCGP eLearning
  • InnovAiT Journal
  • Jobs and careers

MY ACCOUNT

  • RCGP members' login
  • Subscriber login
  • Activate subscription
  • Terms and conditions

NEWS AND UPDATES

  • About BJGP
  • Alerts
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

AUTHORS & REVIEWERS

  • Submit an article
  • Writing for BJGP: research
  • Writing for BJGP: other sections
  • BJGP editorial process & policies
  • BJGP ethical guidelines
  • Peer review for BJGP

CUSTOMER SERVICES

  • Advertising
  • Contact subscription agent
  • Copyright
  • Librarian information

CONTRIBUTE

  • BJGP Life
  • eLetters
  • Feedback

CONTACT US

BJGP Journal Office
RCGP
30 Euston Square
London NW1 2FB
Tel: +44 (0)20 3188 7400
Email: journal@rcgp.org.uk

British Journal of General Practice is an editorially-independent publication of the Royal College of General Practitioners
© 2022 British Journal of General Practice

Print ISSN: 0960-1643
Online ISSN: 1478-5242