Green Social Prescribing

Social prescribing involves a referral pathway, usually from health professionals, via link workers, into community-based activities and services. Green social prescribing refers to pathways supporting transitions into activities in ‘nature’, such as gardening and walking groups, in what is envisaged as a relatively straightforward harnessing of existing groups to support health.

In this hybrid session we present findings from two ethnographic projects conducted in the north-east of England.

Tessa Pollard will first explore the care-full coordination work required to support transitions into gardening and walking groups, considering why, in one social prescribing intervention, such pathways were relatively rare in comparison with a gym pathway.

Laura McGuire will then explore community gardens and growing spaces as therapeutic assemblages, and the ways in which accommodating referrals via a green social prescribing intervention affected the spaces.

In both pieces of work we consider how community groups have distinctive characters that offer a variable ‘fit’ with social prescribing. We invite discussion of our findings, of the potential of medical humanities to contribute in this field, and of the implications of our findings for the national 'roll-out' of green social prescribing.

About the speakers:

Tessa Pollard is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Durham University and a fellow of the Institute for Medical Humanities and the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing. Tessa currently leads an ethnographic study evaluating the impact of social prescribing, with a focus on referral into walking and gardening groups.

Laura McGuire is a postdoctoral research associate with the Department of Anthropology and the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing. Laura is interested in green social prescribing, medical anthropologym and health inequalities research.

Both Laura and Tessa are members of the Moving Bodies Lab of the Discovery Research Platform, hosted by the Institute for Medical Humanities.

This event is free to attend.

Please note that Zoom details will be circulated 24 hours prior to the event.