Authors: Yvonne Zurynski, Alex Vedovi, and K-lynn Smith.
Overview
Social prescribing (SP) is “a mechanism for linking patients with non-medical sources of support within the community.” [1] As Australia develops its 10 Year Primary Health Care Plan and considers whether or not to adopt the practice of SP, it is important to understand the evidence for the implementation and outcomes of SP for patients, for health professionals, health systems and for the community organisation sector.
In order to support potential policy development, we have synthesised current evidence on the effectiveness of social prescribing programs in this rapid literature review. We limited our search to peer-reviewed papers published between 2017-2019 with a focus on the most recent literature and published literature reviews. We identified six literature reviews and 24 empirical studies that met our study criteria.
As social prescribing is a relatively new area, the types of programs and how patients and health care professionals engage with SP is constantly developing. Most studies reviewed by us originated in the UK, with some also from Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain. We found no empirical studies of SP evaluations, nor any literature reviews from Australia. Programs in other countries may exist but were potentially not included in our rapid review because they were published in the reports, guidelines or other grey literature.
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