ReviewSociology of health & illness2022
What does the literature mean by social prescribing? A critical review using discourse analysis.
Review in Sociology of health & illness, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Service user perspectives on social prescribing services for mental health in the UK: a systematic review.Perspectives in public health · 2023Pooled it
- Systematic review of social prescribing and older adults: where to from here?Family medicine and community health · 2022Pooled it
- A Randomized Controlled Trial of Social Prescribing: Comparing a Comprehensive Navigation Model With Signposting.Annals of family medicine · 2026Trial
- Cultural Prescribing: Concepts, Evidence, Implementation, and the Contribution of Socially Engaged Art.Yonago acta medica · 2026Review
- Harms and Negative or Unintended Consequences of Social Prescribing: A Scoping Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Gender Differences in the Longitudinal Relationship Between Psychological Distress and Perceived Social Support.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2026Article
- Linking Social Prescribing and Lifestyle RedesignCanadian journal of occupational therapy. Revue canadienne d'ergotherapie · 2026Article
- Cross-sector perspectives on the role of a UK national cultural asset in social prescribing: a qualitative study.BMC primary care · 2026Article
- Developing a program theory for implementing a Danish social prescribing model: an ethnographic study.Frontiers in health services · 2026Article
- Social prescribing for refugee populations: a rapid realist review of international evidence.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Social prescribing for refugee populations: a protocol for a rapid realist review of international evidence.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Understanding the potential role of Social Prescribing Link Workers in supporting identified needs of people with physical and mental long-term conditions: a qualitative study.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- [From words to deeds: Description and challenges in the implementation of social prescription in spanish primary care].Atencion primaria · 2025Article
- Assessing the implementation and impact of a social prescribing protocol in primary care.BMC primary care · 2025Observational
- How to improve support for people with (complex) multiple-problems through social prescribing in a vulnerable neighborhood; professionals', experts-by-experience' and clients' perspectives.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- Social prescribing of cultural opportunities to support health and wellbeing: the importance of language, community engagement, and inclusion in developing local approaches.BMC primary care · 2025Article
- Barriers and facilitators to implementing nature prescriptions for child and youth health: a scoping review.Health promotion international · 2025Article
- Experiences of integrating social prescribing link workers into primary care in England - bolting on, fitting in, or belonging: a realist evaluation.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Article
- Interrogating green social prescribing in South Wales; A multi-stakeholder qualitative exploration.PloS one · 2025Article
- Applying an equity lens to social prescribing.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Social prescribing (SP) seeks to enhance the role of the voluntary and community sector in addressing patients' complex needs in primary care. Using discourse analysis, this review investigates how SP is framed in the scientific literature and explores its consequences for service delivery. Theory driven searches identified 89 academic articles and grey literature that included both qualitative and quantitative evidence. Across the literature three main discourses were identified. The first one emphasised increasing social inequalities behind escalating health problems and presented SP as a response to the social determinants of health. The second one problematised people's increasing use of health services and depicted SP as a means of enhancing self-care. The third one stressed the dearth of human and relational dimensions in general practice and claimed that SP could restore personalised care. Discourses circulated unevenly in the scientific literature, conditioned by a wider political rationality which emphasised individual responsibility and framed SP as 'solution' to complex and contentious problems. Critically, this contributed to an oversimplification of the realities of the problems being addressed and the delivery of SP. We propose an alternative 'care-based' framing of SP which prioritises (and evaluates) holistic, sustained and accessible practices within strengthened primary care systems.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.