Social Prescribing USA Newsletter - April, 2024

The movement goes mainstream!

This newsletter aims to be the Social Prescribing USA Public Town Square - a central place to catalyze our growing movement in the U.S.  We’ll share insights from the network, philosophy on advancing the movement, important articles about the ever-increasing field, plus provide updates on the rapidly growing social prescribing community.  Have things to share in our next newsletter? Please let us know!

Please let us know if you want to get more involved! Email us at socialprescribingUSA@gmail.com if you want to join our Community of Practice, have suggestions for how we can support the movement, or have relevant content you want to share in this newsletter.

The Social Prescribing movement is increasingly becoming mainstream! Yesterday, The New York Times featured a large article about the growing movement. We were excited to work with the Times on this article, which featured many of our friends and partners, including those at Art Pharmacy and its partnership with Stanford University, Open Source Wellness, Cleveland Clinic, and Dr. Jill Sonke at the University of Florida. We look forward to more media coverage and books about the field in the future! See any coverage of social prescribing? Please let us know!

Social Prescribing Day 2024 Recap

Last month, Social Prescribing USA was thrilled to lead efforts for the first U.S. celebration of Social Prescribing Day. For the first time, organizations around the country joined organizations around the world to hold local events to highlight the growing movement in the U.S. Non-profits held virtual happy hours and programs, and used social media to promote a range of social prescribing efforts in the U.S. We are still hearing about others who celebrated that we didn’t know about.

Social Prescribing USA helped organize two events on March 14th, a virtual webinar and an in-person event. The virtual event showcased social prescribing leaders using arts and nature to boost health, including Dr. Don Rakow from Campus NatureRx, Jill Sonke, from the UF Center for Arts in Medicine, and Jules Hotz, author of ‘The Connection Cure. That webinar can be viewed HERE. Social Prescribing USA also held a live event in San Francisco featuring leaders from organizations around the county, including Art Pharmacy, Stanford Arts, Open Source Wellness, and the VA’s Compassionate Contact Corps. A recording of the live event can be viewed HERE.

South by Southwest - A few days before Social Prescribing day, Chris Appleton, Tasha Golden, and other leaders talked about social prescribing - Social Prescribing: Bridging the Gap Between Art, Well-Being. An audio recording of that event can be found HERE.

Social Prescribing Research

One of the goals of Social Prescribing USA is to catalyze, promote, and disseminate research on social prescribing. Here are some recent studies of note:

New study out of Australia: Showing the effects of social prescribing on loneliness. 

UF EpiArts Lab synthesizes the last three years of their research.

Social isolation linked to biological age gap, higher mortality rate. Mayo Clinic. 

Artistic Medical Students and the Match. AAMC.

Books on Social Prescribing

Some of the first books on social prescribing and the importance of social health are coming!  Stay tuned to this newsletter for upcoming interviews with the authors and editors of these books:

Social Prescribing Policy, Research and Practice: Transforming Systems and Communities for Improved Health and Wellbeing. This is the first book on social prescribing by researchers with first-hand knowledge of its progress since its inception.

The Connection Cure: The Prescriptive Power of Movement, Nature, Art, Service and Belonging This landmark book, coming in June from journalist Julia Hotz, will be the first in the U.S. about social prescribing! Here’s a quick video related to the book.

The Art and Science of Connection: Why Social Health Is the Missing Key to Living Longer, Healthier, and Happier.  Also coming in June from social health advocate Kasly Killam is a groundbreaking redefinition of what it means to be healthy that introduces the need for social health to truly flourish.

Social Prescribing in the Media:

Forbes Global Aging, quoting our medical director, Dr. Alan Siegel, about social prescribing.

Rx? More like ARTx: Stanford launches Art Prescriptions for student wellness profiling the partnership between Arts Pharmacy and Stanford University.

Will Your Next Prescription Be 20 Minutes of Nature a Day? Medscape (a mainstream source of medical information for physicians) has an article about the power of nature in healing.

How the arts can improve your physical, mental, and social wellbeing. Podcast with Chris Bailey, WHO Arts and Health lead.

A New Prescription - a song and video about social prescribing from Medical Director Dr. Alan Siegel and his brother Richard Siegel. It’s been in the charts!

Events: (please let us know of public events to include)

5th International Social Prescribing Conference 2024, June 19-20, 2024. London.

Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing conference. September 26-27, 2024. The first North American conference on SP - Advancing Social Prescribing for Health and Wellbeing.. Ontario. Our medical direcor, Dr. Alan Siegel, will be a keynote.

(Past) 

Investing in Arts and Culture for Healthy Communities. March 27, 2024. Partnership of Federal Reserve Bank, in conjunction with One Nation/One Culture.

Healing Arts Atlanta - April 10, 2024. Launched by the Jameel Arts and Health Lab with collaborators including the Carter Center. Focused on “Championing the Role of the Arts in Addressing Racism as a Public Health Crisis.”

CA Arts & Culture Summit. April 16, 2024. Sacramento, CA. Panel (image below) and workshop on social prescribing with Deborah Cullinan, Vice President for the Arts, Stanford University, Tasha Golden, Ph.D., Director of Research at the International Arts + Mind Lab at Johns Hopkins; Chris Appleton, Founder & CEO of Arts Pharmacy; Indre Viskontas, Ph.D., Cognitive Neuroscientist, Science Communicator & Opera Stage Director

Tools:

• Padlet on social prescribing programs by Ivory Rose (OT)

• Arts on Prescription Field Guide. UF, Mass Cultural, Dr. Tasha Golden

• A Toolkit on How to Implement Social Prescribing | World Health Organization

• Social Prescribing: A Resource for Health Professionals. 2023 Centre for Effective Practice, Canada

• Design for Social Prescribing: Bridging Silos for Health Promotion,. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Design (D) Lab.