Seminar: Can Social Prescribing Make it Easier to be Active?
One in three of us in England live with a health condition and we are twice as likely to be amongst the least physically active, yet we know that being active can help to manage our conditions and increase our quality and length of life and promote positive wellbeing. In recent years there has been growing interest in the role that health professionals can play in making it easier to be physically active, including through social prescribing. Social prescribing is a way for health professionals and other service providers to refer people to a link worker who spends time to understand ‘what matters to them’ and uses this information to tailor packages of community-based support. Although there is a wide range of community-based physical activity opportunities for link workers to refer to currently very little is known about the extent to which this happening or whether it leads to higher levels of activity.
This seminar, hosted by the AWRC’s Healthy and Active 100 research theme, showcases recent research on this topic and provides an opportunity to discuss the implications for policy practice and research.
First, AWRC’s Dr Cath Homer, Suzy Gardner (Sport England) and Michelle Roberts (Richmond Group of Charities) discuss findings from the #EasierToBeActive project which explored the ways in which we help people with long-term health conditions lead a more active lifestyle. View their slides here.
Next, Dr Marie Polley, founder and former Chair of the Social Prescribing Network, shared insights from a collaborative scoping study that explored the current evidence base around social prescribing and physical activity. View their slides here.
This is followed by a discussion exploring the implications of these two studies for future policy, practice and research. You can find our more about the two studies here:
https://www.shu.ac.uk/advanced-wellbeing-research-centre/projects/etba
https://www.shu.ac.uk/advanced-wellbeing-research-centre/projects/socialprescribing