Social Prescribing: Reflecting on Current & Future Models

Oftentimes, social prescribing doesn’t have large amounts of research to back it up. However, there are many factors that can allow it to be successful for building a foundation for patients. In social prescribing, the “medicine” refers to the art and the experiences. The research is very clear that discovering the right arts engagement for the right patient profile is highly effective.

The shortcomings in social prescribing are in the solution itself. Our health systems are overburdened, and cultural organizations are often under-resourced with a large amount of access barriers.

Most social prescribing plans don’t handle patients based on their individual social care needs. This causes issues in providing patient-centered, precision medicine required to receive individual access to the right engagement.

For instance, how can a link worker ensure that a theater performance doesn’t include content that’s triggering for a patient? How does the prescribing provider know that they are referring a physician to culturally relevant and appropriate community resources?

These and the enormity and entrenched problems in our healthcare system are reasons that social prescribing sometimes isn’t as symbiotically for broad adoption.

However, we can relate society’s current behavioral health outlook to our physical health outlook. 

The U.S. healthcare system has acknowledged that our physical health is connected to our physical activity.

For many of our grandparents’ generation, this was not a given.

Thirty-one years ago, Silver Sneakers was established as a network of gyms, fitness centers and physical activity programs for older adults. Today, every single person enrolled in Medicare has access to Silver Sneakers paid for their health insurance plan.

With a rigorous approach, a strong vision of what’s possible, and relentless collaboration, our goal is for the next generation to associate our health outcomes to our engagement with arts & culture. 

Thoughts, questions, want to learn more? Please call 833-ART-4-HEALTH.