The impact of social prescribing services on service users: a systematic review of the evidence
Affiliation
University of BedfordshireIssue Date
2019-06-14Subjects
patient referralprimary health care
self concept
evidence-based practice
prescribing behaviour
community
feelings
NHS
L510 Health & Welfare
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Social prescribing initiatives are widely implemented in the UK National Health Service to integrate health and social care. Social prescribing is a service in primary care that links patients with non-medical needs to sources of support provided by the community and voluntary sector to help improve their health and wellbeing. Such programmes usually include navigators, who work with referred patients and issue onward referrals to sources of non-medical support. This systematic review aimed to assess the evidence of service user outcomes of social prescribing programmes based on primary care and involving navigators. We searched 11 databases, the grey literature, and the reference lists of relevant studies to identify the available evidence on the impact of social prescribing on service users. Searches were limited to literature written in English. No date restrictions were applied, and searches were conducted to June 2018. Findings were synthesized narratively, employing thematic analysis. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool Version 2011 was used to evaluate the methodological quality of included studies. Sixteen studies met the inclusion criteria. The evidence base is mixed, some studies found improvements in health and wellbeing, health-related behaviours, self-concepts, feelings, social contacts and day-to-day functioning post-social prescribing, whereas others have not. The review also shows that the evaluation methodologies utilized were variable in quality. In order to assess the success of social prescribing services, more high quality and comparable evaluations need to be conducted in the future.International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews number: CRD42017079664.Citation
Pescheny JV, Randhawa G, Pappas Y (2019) 'The impact of social prescribing services on service users: a systematic review of the evidence', European Journal of Public Health, 30 (4), pp.664-673.Publisher
Oxford University PressPubMed ID
31199436Additional Links
https://academic.oup.com/eurpub/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/eurpub/ckz078/5519001Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
1101-1262EISSN
1464-360Xae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1093/eurpub/ckz078