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\n Published on
\n 27\/09\/2025 – 8:00 GMT+2\n <\/p>\n
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Doctors in England refer more than one million patients every year to gardening clubs, music groups, housing support, and other non-medical activities to boost their wellbeing, a new analysis has found.<\/p>\n
Collectively known as social prescribing, these activities support patients grappling with social problems that affect their health \u2013 loneliness, grief, finances, housing, employment, or anything else.<\/p>\n
Doctors refer these patients to \u201clink workers\u201d who help them create plans to address these barriers, for example, by having a socially isolated person spend time with others in nature.<\/p>\n
Advocates have long pushed social prescribing as a strategy to boost patient outcomes, lower medical costs, and relieve pressure on the health system \u2013 and in 2019, the National Health Service (NHS) committed to rolling out this approach across primary care clinics in England.<\/p>\n
At the time, the NHS said it hoped that 900,000 patients would be referred to these programmes by 2023-2024.<\/p>\n
The new study shows it has far exceeded that target. An estimated 9.4 million general practitioner (GP) visits involved social prescribing through 2023, leading to 5.5 million referrals.<\/p>\n
The findings underscore \u201cwhat a fundamental and important service social prescribing now is within the NHS,\u201d Daisy Fancourt, one of the study\u2019s authors and head of the UK\u2019s National Centre for Social Prescribing Data and Analysis, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The UK has one of the world\u2019s most advanced social prescribing systems, but the movement has also spread to more than 30 countries across the globe.<\/p>\n