Walking the dog or joining a choir can ease pain

MATT HANCOCK

WHEN we go to see our GP, we want them to help us feel better. We want them to make the pain go away, to cure our condition, and for them to help us feel ourselves again.

Sometimes, that will mean we need medical treatment, but as I’ve come to realise, the best medicine is not always found in the form of a pill, or indeed anything behind the counter at a local pharmacist.

We know, for example, that walking the dog each day can often breathe life and energy back into a person with a painful, chronic illness.

How the chance to meet people at a local community choir can offer relief to a person with dementia. Or how a game of walking football can bring together people who are lonely.

Just a few weeks ago a study from the Wildlife Trust added weight to the evidence that doing activities outdoors can help alleviate symptoms for people with anxiety and depression.

GPs are already starting to prescribe social activities like these to help their patients. We know in some areas where GPs are doing this, people are less likely to end up in hospital.

We now need to build on this incredibly exciting and promising start with more research and more consistency across the country.

Today I’m launching the National Academy for Social Prescribing, the realisation of a long-held ambition of mine to ensure people have access to a huge range of options to improve their health.

Led by one of the country’s top GPs – Helen Stokes Lampard – the academy is backed by £5million in government funding to gather more evidence on this growing area of healthcare, create consistent standards nationwide, and give GPs and health workers access to training they need to offer these services to their patients with confidence.

We want every person in England to have access to these kinds of services over the next few years, starting with all patients experiencing loneliness.

Patients have the right to expect care from the NHS that treats them as a person, not a medical condition.

More access to social prescribing will do just that, offering personalised, personcentred care that is better for patients, staff and the health system alike.