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Social Prescribing

Evaluating the impact of social prescribing on the health and wellbeing of people with type 2 diabetes.

What is social prescribing?

Social prescribing is an intervention with the potential to reduce health inequalities.

Social prescribing is highlighted as one of the ten high impact actions that can:

  • reduce workload
  • increase capacity in general practice
Linking patients to required services

Link worker social prescribing enables healthcare professionals to address patients’ non-medical needs by linking patients into various services.

About the research project

The project took place in a socio-economically deprived area of North East England.

Is is a multi-method study of:

  • community-dwelling adults aged 40-74 years with type 2 diabetes
  • link workers
Project aims
  • to evaluate the impact and costs of a link worker social prescribing intervention on health and healthcare costs and utilisation
  • to observe link worker delivery and patient engagement
Methods

The methods used for the project comprised:

  • quasi-experimental evaluation of effects of social prescribing on health and healthcare use
  • cost-effectiveness analysis
  • ethnographic methods, used to explore intervention delivery and receipt
  • supplementary interview study examining intervention impact during COVID-19 lockdown (April 2020-July 2020)
Key findings

Community-based link worker social prescribing provided a small improvement in glycaemic control. Results from other diabetes related outcomes varied across different participant groups.

Patients who were given support that matched their needs could achieve positive changes and deal with social and health-related problems better. For example:

  • getting benefit entitlements
  • reducing anxiety

However, providing the right type of support was time-consuming and challenging because:

  • of high link worker caseloads
  • many patients lived in difficult circumstances

Social prescribing is challenging to deliver and the effects are difficult to measure. The impact varied from patient to patient.

Partners and project leads
  • funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR PHR Grant No. 16/122/33). See The National Institute for Health and Care Research for more information
  • this is the first large-scale mixed-methods evaluation of social prescribing undertaken in the UK

The project was led by:

  • Professor Suzanne Moffatt

It included the team of Researchers at Newcastle, Durham and Northumbria Universities:

  • Prof John Wildman
  • Prof Tessa M. Pollard
  • Dr Kate Gibson
  • Dr Josephine Wildman
  • Dr Nicola O’Brien
  • Dr Bethan Griffith
  • Dr Stephanie Morris
  • Dr Eoin Moloney
  • Dr Jayne Jeffries
  • Dr Mark Pearce
  • Mr Wael Mohammed
Project outputs

The full report for the project can be found in the following:

  • Moffatt S, Wildman J, Pollard TM, Gibson K, Wildman JM, O’Brien N, Griffith B, Morris SL, Moloney E, Jeffries J, Pearce M, Mohammed W. (in press) PHR 16/122/33: The impact of social prescribing on wellbeing, health, healthcare utilisation and costs for people with type 2 diabetes: multimethod SPRING_NE study. Public Health Research
  • Wildman JM, Morris S, Pollard T, Gibson K, Moffatt S. (2022) “I wouldn’t survive it, as simple as that”: Syndemic vulnerability among people living with chronic non-communicable disease during the COVID-19 pandemic, SSM – Qualitative Research in Health 2, 100032
  • Wildman J, Wildman JM. Evaluation of a Community Health Worker Social Prescribing Program Among UK Patients With Type 2 Diabetes, JAMA Network Open, 2021, JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(9):e2126236
Research projects
Intergenerational project
Martine Franck project