Lee Kheng Hock, Low Lian Leng, Lu Si Yinn, Lee Chien Earn
Office of Community Engagement and Education, SingHealth Community Hospitals, Singapore.
Centre for Population Health Research and Implementation, SingHealth, Regional Health System, Singapore.
Lancet Reg Health West Pac. 2022 Aug 17;35:100561. doi: 10.1016/j.lanwpc.2022.100561. eCollection 2023 Jun.
The need to develop holistic public health approaches that go beyond treating the biological causes of ill health, to addressing the social determinants of health, have been highlighted in the global health agenda. Social prescribing, where care professionals link individuals to community resources that tackle social needs have gained increasing traction worldwide. In Singapore, SingHealth Community Hospitals introduced social prescribing in July 2019 to manage the complex health and social needs of the aging populace. Faced with the paucity of evidence on the effectiveness of social prescribing and its implementation, implementers had to contextualise the theory of social prescribing to patients' needs and setting of practice. Using an iterative approach, the implementation team constantly reviewed and adapted practices, work processes and outcome measurement tools based on data and stakeholder feedback to address implementation challenges. As social prescribing continues to scale in Singapore and take root in the Western Pacific region, agile implementation and continued evaluation of programmes to build an evidence pool will help to guide best practices. The aim of this paper is to review the implementation of a social prescribing programme from the exploratory phase to full implementation, and draw lessons learned in the process.
全球卫生议程强调，需要制定全面的公共卫生方法，超越治疗健康问题的生物学原因，转而解决健康的社会决定因素。社会处方，即护理专业人员将个人与满足社会需求的社区资源联系起来，在全球范围内越来越受到关注。在新加坡，新加坡健康集团社区医院于2019年7月引入了社会处方，以管理老年人群复杂的健康和社会需求。面对社会处方有效性及其实施方面证据不足的情况，实施者不得不根据患者需求和实践环境，将社会处方理论进行情境化调整。实施团队采用迭代方法，根据数据和利益相关者的反馈，不断审查并调整实践、工作流程和结果测量工具，以应对实施挑战。随着社会处方在新加坡不断扩大规模并在西太平洋地区扎根，灵活实施并持续评估项目以建立证据库，将有助于指导最佳实践。本文旨在回顾一个社会处方项目从探索阶段到全面实施的过程，并总结在此过程中吸取的经验教训。
