In 2018, the Alliance for Healthier Communities brought Social Prescribing to Canada. Over the last 5 years, the model has evolved to include special, population-health focuses such as Black health, mental wellness, and active living for seniors.
The Black-Focused Social Prescribing (BFSP) project is a unique initiative by the Alliance for Healthier Communities that intertwines Afrocentric principles with social prescribing. Going beyond conventional social prescribing models, BFSP addresses specific health needs within Black communities. It is rooted in the Alliance Black Health Strategy, advocates for Black health, and is guided by Afrocentric principles.
This is Part I of a special issue of Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada, titled Social prescribing in Canada: An emerging approach to health and well-being.
Editors for this special issue are Kate Mulligan, Kiffer G. Card, and Sandra Allison. It includes an editorial statement, evidence synthesis, original qualitative research, commentary, and an at-a-glance article.
This poster from Guelph Community Health Centre presents an overview and evaluation of their health promotion programs for 2023-24.
Key themes addressed:
Loneliness is a compelling, complex, and multifaceted social issue of the times, which cannot be reduced to a personal trouble writ large. Loneliness is not one thing. There is a need for a broad and multidimensional social approach to loneliness—even broader than a public health approach—that could take up the problem of loneliness as a complex phenomenon.
This report was featured in the 2023 Family Medicine Report from the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. Alongside some of the major findings of the Alliance's Rx:Community Social Prescribing pilot, and it tells the powerful story of Nafisa and her daughter, two participants in Rexdale CHC's Social Prescribing program. Shortly after they came to Canada as asylum seekers, Nafisa experienced complex health challenges.
The Big Ideas Soapbox at Family Medicine Forum (FMF) showcases concepts that could make a difference to clinical practice, faculty development, postgraduate or undergraduate education, patient care and outcomes, or health policy. This session offers a platform for innovators to share fresh ideas, innovative thinking, and fledgling developments with the potential to initiate change. Proposals are selected for presentation at FMF based on reviewers’ scores, and the innovators are invited to the Big Ideas Soapbox session to present and defend their ideas.