Social prescribing is a growing movement that connects people with a range of non clinical programmes, services and events in their local community – like walking groups, mental health counseling, debt management advice, employability skills, volunteering, family fitness, healthy cooking programmes, mindfulness sessions, and the ‘green prescription’ of gardening and food growing.

It seeks to address people’s needs across a number of areas such as physical activity, diet and nutrition, mental health and social support. It is often referred to as a ‘more than medicine’ approach to health and wellbeing based on the fact that the majority of long term conditions can be prevented by lifestyle change alone.

Entitled “Prevention is better than cure”, Matt Hancock’s Prevention Strategy emphasises preventative healthcare and highlights a shift towards community care services and the value they can bring in offering early support.  We’re fully behind this bid to empower patients as this is one of the main reasons we designed Elemental Self Refer , a tool that allows anyone to refer themselves directly to a Community Connector or into quality assured social prescribing activities.