Social prescribing has risen sharply among England’s general practitioners

More than 1 million people a year are now being referred by general practitioners (GPs) to social prescribing services, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL.

The study, published in The Lancet Public Health, estimated that 1.3 million people were referred to social prescribing services by their GP in 2023 alone, with 5.5 million GP consultations including social prescribing referrals since the scheme started in 2019.

This far exceeds the original NHS goal for 900,000 people to be referred over five years by 2023/4.

Through social prescribing, patients are usually referred to a Social Prescribing Link Worker, who has time to explore the social factors affecting a person’s health—including loneliness, isolation and problems with debt and housing—and connect them to support in their community. This could include activities such as exercise, volunteering, arts and culture, counseling, befriending, training courses, housing support, benefits and employment advice.

Social prescribing was introduced as part of English national health policy in 2019. Now, more than 3,300 link workers are employed across the country. In total, the new analysis suggests that there were 9.4 million GP consultations that involved social prescribing discussions between 2019 and 2023.

This study is the first to be published as part of the National Center for Social Prescribing Data and Analysis, a partnership between the National Academy for Social Prescribing and the Social Biobehavioral Research Group within UCL’s Department of Behavioral Science & Health, which aims to improve analysis of patient records and support more data-driven social prescribing.

The paper analyzed primary care records from 1.2 million patients from 1,736 practices in the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) in England. Data was then extrapolated to represent all GP practices in England.

Professor Daisy Fancourt, senior author of the paper from UCL Behavioral Science & Health and Director of the National Center for Social Prescribing Data and Analysis, said, “This paper provides the first detailed estimates of the scale and reach of social prescribing across England, demonstrating the program has generated 5.5 million referrals over five years, with 1.3 million people referred in 2023 alone, far exceeding its intended patient numbers. This underlines what a fundamental and important service social prescribing now is within the NHS.”

Charlotte Osborn-Forde, Chief Executive of NASP, said, “The new NHS Plan highlights the need to join up the NHS with services like debt and housing advice, and to create much better connections with local charities and community groups. Social prescribing is already playing a key role in this, and we look forward to building on this.

“Link workers deal with the complicated, knotty problems that have such a big impact on our health, whether that’s sleepless nights and headaches because of debt, or depression and loneliness after a bereavement. They will be a pivotal part of neighborhood health teams.”

The analysis also showed that growing numbers of referrals were from more deprived areas. Year on year, there was an increase in GP referrals to social prescribing among people in the most deprived areas. Representation from patients in more deprived areas increased from 23% prior to the 2019 national roll-out to 42% in 2023. Previous research from UCL, which looked at referrals not just from GPs but from social care, voluntary organizations and other sources, showed that people from the most deprived areas were accessing social prescribing even more than people from more affluent areas.

In addition, higher proportions of referrals were for patients from an ethnic minority. As of 2023, 23% of social prescribing patients were from an ethnic minority group. This supports previous research from the Race Equality Foundation, which showed higher proportions of social prescribing referrals for those from Black, Asian and minoritized ethnic communities compared to their population.

A recent national evaluation of the roll-out of social prescribing suggested that link workers benefit patients in a range of ways, supporting people with their mental health and with long-term conditions and helping them feel more aware of support available in their community. It concluded that employing link workers “was associated with improved outcomes for individuals specifically targeted for social prescribing and had spillovers through improving overall patient experience with general practice.”

Separate research by the National Academy for Social Prescribing has suggested that social prescribing can lead to reductions in unnecessary GP appointments, A&E attendances and hospital admissions, and save costs for the NHS.