Month: September 2020

Maximising the impact of social prescribing on population health in the era of COVID-19

Our new paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine discusses social prescribing, the process of referring people to non-clinical community services; such as exercise classes and welfare advice, with the aim of improving mental, physical and social wellbeing.

Social prescribing has been increasingly adopted across high-income countries including the UK, United States of America, Canada and Finland. The UK’s Department of Health first introduced the term ‘social prescribing’ in 2006 to promote good health and independence, especially for people with long-term conditions. Over a decade later, in 2019, NHS England committed to funding social prescribing through link workers. Link workers receive referrals, mainly from general practitioners, and are attached to primary care networks with populations of 30–50,000 people.

In the paper, we examine the impact of different social prescribing schemes in England, from a population health perspective, that focus on individuals, communities or a combination of both. We examine the opportunities to maximise social prescribing’s impact on population health, in the era of COVID-19, by realigning social prescribing to a household model that reflects principles of universality, comprehensiveness and integration.

Excess mortality: the gold standard in measuring the impact of COVID-19 worldwide?

Our new paper published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine discusses excess mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic. The scale of the COVID-19 pandemic has forced policy-makers to operate with limited evidence for the relative success of different control measures.  Excess mortality is one key outcome measure. The highest excess mortality per million population is seen in Spain, followed by England and Wales. The majority of these excess deaths are caused by COVID-19, but a significant proportion are not directly related to COVID-19. In measuring the impact of COVID-19, mortality is however only one of many important outcomes. Even in ‘mild’ cases not requiring hospitalisation, symptoms can be long-lasting, and heart and lung complications are common, affecting quality of life and ability to work. Beyond the effects on health, the pandemic has disrupted all aspects of society – many countries have experienced record economic recessions, while school closures affect children’s educational attainment.