Social Prescribing - What is it? How is it done?

Access to social support and community are basic human needs. Lack of this, in the form of involuntary loneliness, is as important a risk factor for disease, ill health and premature death as, for example, smoking. In social prescribing, primary care and community resources are linked by a health navigator to promote health in a coordinated and person-centred way.

The organisers invite you to a conference at Staby Gårdshotell in Högsby, Sweden, to discuss how we can take advantage of the interest in Sweden to promote health in a coordinated and person-centred way. This working model involves strengthening the link between primary care centres and other actors in the local community to create an infrastructure where person-centred care can seamlessly transition into person-centred support.

A health pilot becomes the link that helps people out of involuntary loneliness or other problems that cannot be solved by medical interventions alone. Through this, we optimise the patient's health together.

Social prescribing can be seen as an umbrella term for methods such as culture on prescription, nature on prescription, social activity on prescription as well as physical activity on prescription, all of which require a functioning and supportive infrastructure with coordination at both individual and local population level.

Can social prescribing via a health pilot working in the gap between primary care and local community actors be a model for this person-centred infrastructure?

The reason why the conference is located in Högsby, Småland, is that Högsby Municipality, in collaboration with Region Kalmar, is running a regional development project, called Hälsolots Högsby, to test and develop social prescribing in a Swedish context.

Our Interreg BSR project, in particular, the pilot programme in Norrbotten, will be presented by Kerstin Thelander, co-organiser of the comference, as one of the current Swedish initiatives working with social prescribing approaches.

Besides in-person participation, the conference offers a live-stream for registered person - a registration fee both for in-person and virtual participation is asked for.

The conference language is Swedish, but selected sessions are held in English as well.

The full agenda in Swedish is available here.

For the programme in English, please follow this link.