Doctors give ‘social prescriptions’ for fitness, arts and socializing : NPR

Frank Frost found camaraderie and better health in a cycling group in the United Kingdom that his doctor recommended trying.

Frank Frost

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Frank Frost

For more than 30 years, Frank Frost, worked as a long-distance truck driver, carrying industrial chemicals across the United Kingdom

“I worked far from my home six days a week, working up to 12-15 hours a day,” said Frost, now 76 years old. “My only exercise was looking for a fast food point in the evening when I parked,” he said.

He gained weight and received a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes in the fifties. His doctors put him on insulin injections and told him to lose weight and move more.

“When L, like most people have failed, they made me feel weak and worthless,” said Frost.

Then Frost met a doctor with a completely different approach – the one who changed his life.

“He asked me what was going well, what I had never been asked before,” said Frost. “I told her that I wanted to live long enough to see my grandchildren grow up.”

The doctor also asked Frost the things he liked to do when he was a child and discovered that he liked to cycle. He gave him a prescription for a ten -week bicycle course called Pedal Ready for adults who go back to cycling.

“I haven’t been cycling for almost 50 years before starting to cycle again,” said Frost.

What the doctor of Frost had done was to give him a social prescription, says journalist Julia Hotz, who wrote on the experience of Frost in her new book Cure connection: the normative power of movement, nature, art, service and belonging.

This is the idea that health professionals “literally prescribe a community activity or a resource in the same way that they would prescribe pills or therapies,” she explains. The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exhibition to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous advantages for physical and mental health.

And it all starts with “turning the script from what is the problem with you to focus on what matters to you,” said Hotz. “What are your activities you like? What makes you get out of bed in the morning?”

The prescription of Frost helped him make friends after years in a solitary profession.

And that helped him lose 100 pounds, master his diabetes and get out of insulin. He says he still makes bikes with friends he made through the bicycle class. They are called the “chain gang” and the members take care of each other.

“We are all of a certain age,” explains Frost. “We don’t leave anyone. It has changed my life.”

Pressing the role of lifestyle in health

Social prescriptions are not intended to replace pills or therapies, explains Hotz, but to complete them.

Chronic diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer, are now the main cause of death in the world. And research decades have shown that the adoption of healthy habits can extend them.

For example, the social connection raises our mood and benefits health overall – and friends can hold people responsible when creating new healthy habits. Time in the wild can reduce stress, explains Hotz. Studies also show that exercise can alleviate depression and anxiety and stimulate cardiovascular health. And music and the arts are known to be therapeutic for people with mental and behavioral disorders.

Health care providers in around thirty countries are prescribing social prescription to treat the symptoms of type 2 diabetes, chronic pain, dementia, hyperactivity disorder of attention, anxiety and depression deficit, among others,, Said Hotz. And an increasing number of providers – around 250 so far – in the United States are also starting to use them, according to Social Prescrim USA, a non -profit organization pleading for this approach.

“Social prescription, really has the promise and research to save it to change health care in a way that would heal us for all of us,” said Dr. Alan Siegel, family doctor at Kaiser Permanent in Oakland, California, and executive director of the United States social prescription.

The National Health Service in the United Kingdom has incorporated social prescription, covering the cost of hiring social workers to connect patients to the right community group. Most of the United States prescribers will associate with community organizations offering group activities.

But in some cases, health insurers help cover related costs. For example, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield has teamed up with New Jersey Performing Arts Center to link high users of the health and culture programs in the community.

Health and cost advantages

Studies in the United Kingdom, which regularly use social prescription, show that it does not only improve health, but also saves money.

“There is a reduction in emergency visits, during repeated visits to primary care providers, over time, generates a fairly large return on investment,” explains Hotz.

Health care systems recognize more and more than “it is cheaper for them to cover ten weeks of zumba lessons than to cover, for example, drug hypertension drugs during a lifetime or GLP agonists during a lifetime,” she adds.

A report on social prescription in Canada revealed that for the elderly, there were nearly $ 300 million economic dollars of lower hospitalizations, emergency calls and emergency visits due to less falls. Among the young people, they found a 14% increase in life profits from young people aged 15 to 17, struggling with anxiety and depression.

Art Pharmacy, a Georgia based program that collaborates with health systems, insurers and universities to connect patients to cultural activities, reports that more than two -thirds of participating people have seen better mental health and a reduction in emergency visits.

The doctors of the Center for Geriatric Medicine of the Cleveland Clinic found the social prescription particularly precious for the elderly, explains Dr. Ardehir Hashmi, chief of geriatrics.

They regularly ask patients regularly as: “What was your career? Who else is at home? Do you have friends? Do you have family? What do you like to do and do you always do these things?”

Hashmi has had patients who want to be more connected to nature, or who wish to be a member of a reading club, or engage in art creation, or in volunteering.

His patients have experienced a “significant improvement” of the levels of loneliness, he says, as well as in the symptoms of depression, anxiety and memory problems.

What lights you up? Find a prescription for yourself

Anyone interested in social prescription can consult a card on the social prescription of the United States website for a list of health organizations and systems that do so in a certain title.

The types of programs listed include Walk with a doc, an organization organizing walks with doctors in the communities of 54 states and territories. It aims to help people kissing the health for health.

And if you don’t see something in your region, try to ask your doctor for help, even if they don’t know social prescription, suggests Hashmi.

He suggests asking your doctor questions like: “Is there a community with which you can connect me?”

And if your doctor is unable to help you, Hotz suggests turning to the Internet to search for community organizations that already do what you are looking for, whether hike, drawing, singing, swimming, volunteering with children or spending time with friends.

“There are a ton of options to choose, many options in local libraries, departments of local parks, a ton of groups trying to make social prescriptions free or at low cost for people,” she said.

The key, says Hotz, is to ask yourself the right questions before you start looking for a community organization to join.

For example, “What is lighting you in the morning? If you had two more hours in the week, what would you like to do? What was an activity that you liked to do when I was a child but that you did not have the chance to do since?” she said.