Let’s give every healthcare professional the tools to write a better script.
Ask most people what a doctor does and they will often describe the familiar clinical script: assess the problem, make a diagnosis, prescribe treatment and arrange follow-up.
But anyone who has spent time in healthcare knows that some of the most powerful interventions we can offer are not medical at all.
Social prescribing is the practice of connecting people to non-medical support in their own community: a walking group, an art class, a community garden, a volunteering opportunity, a befriending service, a dance class, a sports club or a carer support group.
It sits alongside conventional care, not instead of it. The premise is simple and deeply human: health is physical, mental and social, and good care needs to respond to all three.
Social prescribing should be part of the toolkit for every healthcare professional. The opportunity often appears in ordinary moments of care: the pharmacist who notices an aged care resident withdrawing from others, the physiotherapist who sees a rehabilitation patient losing confidence, the nurse who recognises that a young person needs connection and purpose, or the paediatrician who sees that a child with chronic illness needs activity, friendship and confidence as much as clinical follow up.
This is not soft medicine.
The social determinants of health account for an estimated 30% to 55% of health outcomes.
Yet our health system is still largely designed to treat illness after it appears, rather than addressing the social factors that often sit upstream. Social prescribing gives healthcare professionals a practical way to act earlier.
The evidence has caught up
A major University College London study, recently published in Nature Health, found that social prescribing was associated with significant improvements in wellbeing, with an estimated £9 return in social value for every £1 invested.
The study analysed data from 19,627 people who received support through a link worker and found improvements across mental wellbeing, happiness, life satisfaction, anxiety and sense of purpose. Importantly, the benefits were seen across socioeconomic groups, suggesting this is not a niche intervention, but one with broad relevance.
In a health system under pressure, that matters. Social prescribing is one of the few interventions that can improve quality of life, support prevention and reduce avoidable demand on clinical services.
One of the clearest examples is loneliness. It affects one in three Australian adults and two in five young people, and its health impact has been compared with smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It is now recognised as an independent risk factor for chronic disease and is associated with significant avoidable harm.
Social prescribing gives us a practical way to respond.
What it looks like in practice
Consider Margaret, a 78-year-old woman living alone after the death of her husband. She presents regularly with poor sleep, aches, low appetite and a sadness she does not quite name. Her tests are normal, but she has become increasingly isolated.
A social prescription connects her with a local walking group, a befriending service and a council-run community class. Three months later, she is leaving the house twice a week, has new people in her life and her symptoms have started to settle.
Now consider Amara, a 10-year-old child with asthma. Her treatment plan is in place, but she has become less confident with exercise, avoids sport at school and worries about coughing in front of other children.
A social prescription connects her with a local dance class or martial arts program that can build her fitness gradually, support her confidence and give her the chance to make friends outside school. The goal is not just more exercise. It is helping a child feel stronger, more capable and less defined by her condition.
Margaret and Amara are very different patients, but the principle is the same. Social prescribing helps healthcare professionals respond to the social factors that shape health, not just the clinical symptoms in front of them.
Why it is not mainstream yet
If social prescribing is so valuable, why is it still not routine?
It’s not because there is a lack of community support. In many places, the opposite is true. There are often hundreds of services, community organisations, local programs, charities, peer support groups, council initiatives and condition specific supports available.
The problem is that people do not know where to start.
Clinicians may recognise that a patient needs social connection, exercise confidence, transport support or help navigating local services, but they often do not know what is available, whether it is still running, who is eligible, how to refer, or what happens next.
Related
Patients and families face the same challenge. Being handed a long list of services can feel overwhelming, especially when they are already unwell, isolated, time poor or under stress. It is telling that entire directories and navigation guides are now being created simply to help people make sense of what already exists.
The issue is not goodwill. It is navigation.
Social prescribing will only become routine when it is easy to identify the need, find the right local support, make the connection and close the loop.
This is precisely where technology can help.
Digital enablement is the missing link
We do not need to reinvent social prescribing. We need to make it simple, visible and part of routine care.
Imagine social prescribing embedded directly into the software clinicians already use to manage patients and send referrals. At the same time a GP refers a patient with cardiovascular disease to their local cardiologist, they could also connect them to a nearby Parkrun, a healthy cooking class or a local peer support program, with one additional click.
A live, curated directory of community services would sit within the referral workflow, filtered by the patient’s postcode so the options are local, relevant and practical. The social prescription could then be sent electronically to a link worker or community organisation, with the clinician able to see whether the patient connected, attended and benefited.
That is how social prescribing becomes part of routine care, not an optional extra that depends on memory, paper lists or a clinician knowing what happens to be available locally.
Done well, digital enablement can reduce the time burden on busy clinicians, support better follow up and extend access to the people who need it most, including older people, children with chronic illness, rural communities, people living with disability, carers and those who are socially isolated.
We have seen this before. Electronic prescribing and telehealth became routine once the infrastructure made them easy to use. Social prescribing is now at the same point.
What is missing is the connective tissue: a digital way to identify social need, find the right local support, send the social prescription and close the loop.
Let’s give every healthcare professional the tools to write a better script.
Associate Professor Vikram Palit is a paediatric respiratory physician, and CEO and founder of Consultmed.
