Doctor’s orders—head to the museum instead of the pharmacy
A movement is taking shape in the UK and elsewhere to make social support an official part of health care—an approach called “social prescribing.” Can it work in the US?
Doctors aren’t known for prescribing museum visits, dance classes, nature walks, or volunteering. But such social prescriptions are now becoming commonplace in more than two dozen countries. And in the spring of 2023 the first U.S. initiative of its kind will let some New Jersey health providers choose whether to instruct patients to attend free arts and culture events.
Social determinants—the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, work, and age—are known to shape health. Studies show one in five doctors’ appointments in the United Kingdom are for non-medical reasons such as loneliness, financial stress or poor housing. But doctors don’t treat social conditions, with some exceptions. Instead of a health care model based entirely on pills and procedures, where doctors ask patients, ‘what is the matter with you,’ this concept makes a paradigm shift to asking ‘what matters to you,’” says Bogdan Chiva Giurca, a London-based physician and a champion of social prescribing in the U.K. and globally.
Read more at Harvard Public Health.