Larimer County experts take grassroots approach to loneliness crisis - EP Trail
Thomas Clayton
Panel discusses 'social prescribing'
Larimer County hosted a panel discussion and group conversation Tuesday on “social prescribing,” a holistic approach to public health that has taken hold in the United Kingdom and that advocates hope to replicate in the United States, particularly aimed at addressing a growing loneliness crisis in the country.
Social prescribing, according to advocates, seeks to address issues that cannot be treated with medication, but that nevertheless have considerable downstream effects on emotional, mental and physical health, most notably social isolation.
“We know that health does not begin or end at the clinic,” Larimer County Director of Public Health Tom Gonzales told a gathering of educators, healthcare providers, civil servants and nonprofit employees Tuesday. “It’s shaped every day by the conditions in which we live. It’s our housing, our education, our income, our environment, our relationships and even more importantly, our sense of belonging.”
Social prescribing addresses this by recognizing points where isolated people do find community, often through direct services like healthcare or interactions with government and nonprofit organizations, and directing those individuals to areas where they can find a greater sense of community.
This combats loneliness, which puts people at risk of suicide worsening mental health outcomes, and even impacts physical health by causing unhealthy diets and exercise routines and raising stress levels, according to advocates and panelists Tuesday.
Loneliness is a growing problem, not only in Larimer County but across the country, Gonzales said, especially among young people.
“We know that adults who report loneliness are more likely to report poor mental and physical health,” he said. “And perhaps more concerning, what brings us all together, is our young adults are experiencing loneliness at nearly twice the rate of our adults.”
Panelists who are experts on the topic elaborated on the particular ways they’ve integrated the practice into their own work.
Laura Swink, an associate professor at Colorado State University’s occupational therapy department and a researcher who is running a study on social prescribing for patients with Parkinson’s disease, said that follow-ups are crucial and are what separates social prescribing from simple resource referral.
Following up with participants in her study to determine the effectiveness of her prescriptions is important, she said, and the fact that a group of patients with Parkinson’s who joined a boxing group had reported becoming best friends was a sign that her intervention was working.
Similarly, followups to gently ensure that the prescription is being followed are necessary.
“All of us, if someone said today, ‘Go do this book club that you want to do,’ would you?” she wondered. “You need some of that followup and encouragement.”
Social prescribing works, according to advocates, because it’s something that people across vastly different fields of expertise can engage with. Sunrise Community Health Chief Clinical Officer Mark Wallace, one of Tuesday’s panelists, approaches the issue more literally, actually prescribing walking or jogging time or specific community involvement to patients, complete with a handwritten prescription like one would receive for painkillers or antidepressants.
But social prescribing can, and according to panelists, must, be done through extensive community networks by people up and down the chain. One example provided in the materials for the panel suggested that if an older adult client at a food bank indicated that they rarely leave the house, suggesting that they enroll in the Meals on Wheels visitor program for companionship, and then follow up the next time that client visits to see if they had done so or need assistance reaching the appropriate people.
Tables of attendees from a wide range of different occupations, united only by working for agencies that could be that touchpoint, connecting isolated individuals with a larger community, spent the last portion of the event brainstorming how they could integrate social prescribing into their work.
It’s a possibility for anyone who works directly with clients who might be isolated, Swink said.
“It’s a level of awareness of ‘Who can I send them to?’” she said. “And I don’t mean a phone call, not ‘where can I send them?’ but ‘Who can walk alongside them to help them with this?’ It’s you or someone else in your organization walking them through the door.”
 | Tom Clayton Communication and Media Specialist, Public Affairs |
| Commissioners' Office 200 W Oak St, Fort Collins, 80522 | 2nd Floor W: (970) 498-7005 tcla...@larimer.org | www.larimer.org |