The role of community assets in tackling UK health inequalities through community engagement and partnerships in social prescribing

Introduction With policy focused on prevention and re-location of care into communities to reduce the burden on acute services, the need for robust evidence from social prescribing that integrates community assets into health and care systems is becoming increasingly vital. Methods As part of a national multi-centered program of research, ‘Mobilizing Community Assets to Tackle Health Inequalities’, seven projects from across the UK participated in an online survey asking how their work involved social prescribing, successes and challenges, and tackling health inequalities. Survey data was supplemented with information from quarterly spreadsheets where projects recorded academic and creative outputs, events, partnerships, posts, ways of working, and audiences or communities. Results Six themes: activities/interventions; audiences/communities; funding; methods; partners/stakeholders; and research aims/focus, with 62 subthemes were derived from the survey data. Responses showed that projects worked in the UK’s most deprived areas delivering social prescribing focusing on the social determinants of health, and mapping community assets and pathways for underserved groups. Successes were attributed to link workers as knowledge brokers, and partnerships with primary and secondary care, and arts and community organizations in co-producing local interventions. Challenges such as variation in the flexibility of creative approaches and lack of knowledge about community assets were also attributed to link workers. Other challenges included accessibility, participant non-attendance, and funding issues. Discussion To tackle health inequalities, projects used hyper-local, place-based approaches and co-design of interventions promoting cultural and green community assets, with link workers, people with lived experience, peer support workers and volunteers. The study proposes an approach to social prescribing that combines models of recovery and peer support underpinned by self-determination theory to improve social inclusion and quality of life. Recommendations include a consortium-based approach to person-centered care working closely with local populations and public health, where provision is co-located and co-delivered in conjunction with relevant data concerning health conditions and the wider social determinants to address the root causes of health inequalities.