This important book explores how community-based interventions can bridge the gap between health services and the voluntary sector to create more sustainable, healthy communities.
Moving beyond a technologically driven, medicalised approach to healthcare, the book shows how social prescribing can provide a direct pathway to improving community health, embracing connection and challenging inequality. Written by a practicing GP, and illustrated through practical guidance, it demonstrates how this can offer a cost-effective, preventative means to improving health outcomes, enabling communities to be more resilient when confronting major issues such as climate change or pandemics.
Building to a case study of how these methods were used in one town, Ross-on-Wye, the book will be invaluable reading for those working in healthcare, public health, local authorities, and the voluntary sector, as well as students and researchers interested in these areas.
Author(s): Simon Lennane
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 221
City: London
Cover
Endorsement Page
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Notes
Chapter 1: Community health
What is community?
Support
Groups
Bridges and bonds
Individualism
Media
Social capital and health
Measuring social capital
Notes
Chapter 2: Health and its determinants
Illness and disease
Social determinants of health
Inequality
How do social determinants affect health?
Microbiome
Adverse childhood experiences
Physiology of trauma
Trauma-informed communities
Resilience
Notes
Chapter 3: Disorders of society
Loneliness
Dementia
Mental health
Diagnosis
Distress
Symptomatology
Does more healthcare make us more healthy?
Salutogenesis and wellbeing
Notes
Chapter 4: Healthcare structures
Prevention or cure?
Specialist care
Care closer to home
NHS structures
Integrated care systems
Primary care networks
Patient involvement
Measuring the cost-effectiveness of care
Mental health services
Talking therapies
Wider provision
Notes
Chapter 5: Prescribing society
Social prescribing
Social prescribers
Volunteering
Directory of services
Referrals
Assessing effectiveness
Social return on investment
Notes
Chapter 6: Social prescriptions
Faith groups
Exercise and activity
Nature
Blue prescribing
Green therapies
Food and nutrition
Learning
Mentoring
Arts and creativity
Bibliotherapy
Music
Prescribing social capital
Flow
Notes
Chapter 7: Social infrastructure
Third places
Greenspace
Dementia friendly communities
Road infrastructure
Active by design
Community engagement
Ensuring true participation
Power
Powerlessness
Empowerment
Activism
Notes
Chapter 8: COVID-19
Communication
The impacts of locking down
Social capital and COVID-19
COVID-19 and inequality
Politics of COVID-19
Long Covid
Safely re-engaging with associational life
Immunisation
COVID-19 and climate crisis
Lessons for the next crisis
Notes
Chapter 9: Planetary health
Depletion of the ozone layer
Air quality
Fertiliser loading (nitrogen and phosphorus)
Ocean acidification
Freshwater use
Biodiversity loss
Land conversion
Chemical pollution
Climate change
Health effects of climate change
Do no harm – the impact of healthcare
Costs of mitigating climate change
Notes
Chapter 10: Sustainable policy
‘We’ve had enough of experts’
Welfare policy
Is there such a thing as society?
Polarisation and anomie
Meta-crisis
Neoliberalism
Sustainable changes
How to talk about change
Open data
Universal basic services
Circular economy
Notes
Chapter 11: Developing community
Promoting community
Community models
Asset-based community development
Asset mapping
Representation
Participation
Leadership
Tips
Checklist: key issues in participation processes
Checklist: community empowerment
Notes
Further resources
Communities
Inequality
ACEs and trauma
Healthcare
Social prescribing
Social infrastructure
Planetary health
Sustainable policy
Community development
Acknowledgements
Glossary
Credits
Index
