Authors: Wells, Morgan, and Zurynski.
Overview
Several countries are implementing policies to integrate care for health and social services, recognising that siloed health and community and volunteer-run services and activities are inadequate to meet the increasingly complex health and social needs of patients.1
This report outlines the arguments for a strategic and systematic approach to incorporating social prescribing into the Australian healthcare system, starting in primary care. Social prescribing is ‘a means of enabling GPs [general practitioners], nurses and other primary care professionals to refer people to a range of local, non-clinical services’.2 Social prescribing could provide a valuable addition to the existing range of healthcare options in Australia. However, to date, the adoption of social prescribing as an organised program of support has been limited.
It is well known that socioeconomic factors in people’s lives can affect their health and wellbeing and can often be the reason people reach out to healthcare services. Social prescribing can address key risk factors for poor health, including social isolation, unstable housing, multimorbidity and mental health problems. These factors are associated with low engagement in preventive activities and low levels of self-management for medical conditions.
This was a short summary of the original article
which can be downloaded in full as a PDF below
