Professor Kamila Hawthorne has been appointed as the new Chair of Trustees for the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP). At this critical time for the NHS, we are delighted that one of the country’s leading GPs will be shaping the future of our work.
Kamila has been a GP for almost 37 years, and is the current Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners Council. She is also on the Trustee Boards of the Kings Fund, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and Moondance Cancer Initiative. With wide experience of general practice and running community projects in diabetes and heart disease, she has been named ‘GP of the Year’ twice and was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to General Practice. She is also a Bevan Commissioner and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.
Social prescribing is a way of connecting people to non-medical activities, groups and services in the community that improve health and wellbeing. This approach became part of NHS care across England in 2019, with Social Prescribing Link Workers employed by GP practices to support patients. Since then, more than 2.6 million people have been referred to social prescribing services.
NASP was established as a registered charity in 2019, and is at the forefront of developing social prescribing in England and around the world. The Academy supports a wide range of organisations with guidance on developing and implementing social prescribing, drives investment into community activities and shares the latest evidence and data, raising awareness of the approach to healthcare leaders and the wider public.
Evidence reports by NASP show that social prescribing can reduce loneliness, improve mental health and have a positive impact for people living with a wide range of health conditions. It can also lead to substantial reductions in avoidable GP appointments, A&E attendances and hospital admissions, and save costs for the NHS.
Kamila will take up the role of Chair of NASP in June. She takes over from Professor Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard, who stepped down in October 2024 to start a new role as National Chief Medical Officer at Health New Zealand / Te Whatu Ora. Jonathan Badyal has been our Acting Chair since October.
I'm so delighted to be offered this role. As a longstanding GP, I am very well aware of the ways in which social aspects of life can affect health. Social prescribing is a way of connecting people who need something more than medicines to organisations and groups that can help them - often much better than a doctor's prescription! With a new government promising radical changes in the way we run our NHS, social prescribing has a real opportunity to offer something more (and different) to people, and I'm looking forward to working with NASP to realise that potential.
We are delighted that Kamila has accepted the role of Chair of NASP, following a robust recruitment process. As one of the country’s leading GPs, she is the perfect person to lead our work at this critical time for the NHS. There is now strong evidence that social prescribing benefits individuals, communities and the wider health system, and that it can help to tackle health inequalities. Kamila will play a crucial role in championing social prescribing in the health system and beyond.
