SINGAPORE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE IN
SOCIAL PRESCRIBING
What is
Social Prescribing?
Social prescribing is an innovative approach to connecting people with non-medical sources of support within their local community. It is a way of linking individuals to a range of local, non-clinical services, such as community groups, arts activities, and other voluntary and charity organisations with the view to improve their social determinants of health.
This helps people to gain a greater understanding of their own wellbeing, while providing them with an opportunity to access meaningful activities and services that can help them to improve their mental and physical health.
Social prescribing encourages individuals to take an active role in managing their own health and wellbeing and can play an important role in supporting individuals to stay healthy and well.
Our current care delivery systems have traditionally focused on addressing patients' biomedical needs from a clinical perspective.
Social prescribing recognises that individuals should be treated using a biopsychosocial approach, and is a way to enable professionals to address social determinants early in the healthcare setting.
Social determinants of health are conditions in the environment in which people are born, live, learn, work, play and age that affect a wide range of health and quality of life outcomes.
Social Determinants of Health
-
Socioeconomic Factors
-
Health Behaviours
-
Physical Environments
Healthcare
20%
80%
Did you know?
80% of an individual’s health is determined by non-clinical factors including social determinants of health.
Role of the
SingHealth Wellbeing Coordinator
The SingHealth Wellbeing Coordinator, the integral workforce behind SingHealth Community Hospitals’ social prescribing efforts, collaborate with both patients and multidisciplinary clinical teams to co-develop personalised social prescriptions, which aim to link the patients to an asset in the community – be it an active ageing centre, an activity with the resident’s network or a person, or a community group active in a specific, meaningful social activity.
Watch the video to learn more about the work of our wellbeing coordinators.
Social Prescribing Process in
SingHealth Community Hospitals
Follow-up with patient
Link patient
to community
partner
Identify and
connect with community
support and
activities
Identify needs
& encourage inpatient
activities
Build relationship
& trust with patients
Wellbeing coordinators
engage & screen patient’s eligibility