After five years as Chair of Trustees for NASP, Professor Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard is leaving to become National Chief Medical Officer for Health New Zealand. She reflects on what has been achieved – and the next steps for social prescribing.
As a frontline GP, I know first-hand that the root causes of many health problems cannot be addressed by doctors or medicines. If someone can’t sleep because of fears about debt, doctors may be able to prescribe sleeping pills to ease the symptoms, but we don’t have the time or expertise to help people access the right benefits or seek out grants. If someone is depressed because they are lonely, we cannot drop our responsibilities at the clinic and take them along to a group to meet new people.
Finally, in order for social prescribing to work well, communities across the country need the resources to support people, and effective projects need investment to thrive. Because voluntary sector funding is often short-term and fragmented, NASP is proposing shared investment funds - long-term funding aligned to local health needs.
The NHS is under enormous pressure, and the Government is rightly focusing on prevention and bringing more care into communities. Social prescribing is not a panacea and cannot fix all the wider problems in society. But it does provide a crucial bridge between the health system and community support, help people more active and less isolated, and give people more control. While I am sad to be leaving NASP, I couldn’t be prouder of what we have achieved together and will be watching with great anticipation for what is to come.