Welcome to this episode of Talking Meds where your host, Jonathan Underhill, Medicines Clinical Adviser at PrescQIPP, talks to Monica Boulton about the role of social prescribing.

Social prescribing involves connecting people to activities, groups and support to improve their health and wellbeing. Many things that affect our health, like loneliness, debt, stress or poor housing, can't be treated by medicine alone. 

Social prescribing connects people to non-medical support to address these issues and other unmet need.

This may involve helping someone join a befriending group, an art class or choir, take up exercise or even help them connect with services to help them manage debt. In short, it can help people to connect and to grow in confidence.

Monica is the Strategic Lead for Healthcare Integration & Neighbourhood Health at the National Academy for Social Prescribing (NASP). With over a decade of experience in social prescribing, Monica initially worked on local implementation before moving into strategic planning and programme delivery on both local and national scales. She now leads NASP’s Social Prescribing Workforce Programme with a role seeking to promote clinical engagement, drive integration of social prescribing across healthcare systems, and championing workforce development.

PrescQIPP have hosted a series of webinars to raise awareness of social prescribing. Attendees who complete all seven webinars (including watched the recordings), will be awarded 'Social Prescribing Champion' status as part of the NASP clinical champion programme

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PrescQIPP is funded by the NHS for the NHS, and our aim is to improve medicines-related care for patients. We do this by producing high quality evidence-based resources and training, and by facilitating networks between NHS organisations and professionals.

The majority of pharmacists and other healthcare professionals across the UK can access our resources by registering and logging on to our website. If you have any difficulty accessing the website you can email [email protected] and we’ll aim to sort things out for you.

Find out more about PrescQIPP here