Connecting People to Community-based Activities that Improve Their Health [Podcast Series]
[:55] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Julia Hotz
Julia Hotz is a journalist and author.
She is the author of The Connection Cure.
[1:07] Defining social prescribing
“First of all, both of us sort of settled on movement rather than something like exercise or physical activity or fitness. That just feels like a much friendlier, more accessible term. And then living more, not just living longer, but living better. And that's certainly something I came across in my research, in my reporting. Social prescribing, which I define sort of simply as a referral to a non medical resource or activity based on what matters to a person.”
[5:48] Connecting people to community-based activities that improve their health
“What I think I was trying to do with the book is show, not tell. And show the art therapist who's been doing this for 50 years, to show the doctor who's really passionate about taking his patients out in nature, who's been doing this for a decade. You're all doing social prescribing. If you are engaging in some kind of work that is connecting your patients, your clients, the community you serve, to other opportunities in that community as a way to improve their health, I think that's social prescribing.”
[11:52] Social prescribing incentives
“Well, I think that my understanding is, we talk about the Asian countries, for example, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, China, countries where social prescribing is starting to emerge, more than it necessarily being about there's a lot of expertise in nature prescription or art prescription. It's really more about what was their incentive to begin social prescribing. And in Asian countries, it happened to be that one in four adults are going to be over 65 by 2030. I believe that's the statistic. They have a very rapidly aging population.”
[17:48] The role of trust in social prescribing
“However, I think it's right to suggest that part of the success of social prescribing comes from the way that we do place a lot of trust in our health care providers, particularly like our primary care physicians, from whom many social prescriptions come from, or are therapists, right? The problem, however, tends to be that many of these same primary care physicians or therapists who very strongly believe in social prescribing as something being valuable for their patients also may not be trained A) in what's available in the community, or B) might not have the time to have those real trust building conversations.”
[23:15] Overcoming barriers to uptake and adherence
“What I try to do in the book is let the stories speak for themselves, is the same people maybe who were skeptical or hesitant about social prescribing have become some of the biggest champions, and who would say that if my doctor hadn't prescribed this, if it didn't go through this formal prescription referral reimbursement process, then I wouldn't have done it myself…”
[25:40] Addressing health needs and wants
“I think, in many ways, social prescribing is just addressing the needs and the wants that we all have. And, you know, again, building on practices many health professionals have observed for a long time building on theories and ideas about health. We know it's all connected, but this is offering one way for people across many different disciplines, for community organizations, across many different kinds of prescriptions, to actually do that.”
[27:28] Social Prescribing USA
“They'd had a lot of interest from health professionals around the country, but to look back then into what Social Prescribing USA is now. They just had this awesome convening of leaders. They are very soon going to be hosting Social Prescribing Day. They are working on getting more supports out there to the people working on this.”
[30:05] Call to action for World Social Prescribing Day
“So I would say, like personally, people should ask themselves that question and then see what is available in your community, starting with parks and libraries, to answer that.”
