Is social prescription the path to a healthier, happier workforce?

If in a few years you ask your GP to prescribe painkillers for back pain, you might be surprised to find yourself being sent to a gardening or walking club. But with the explosion in interest of social prescription, the whole modus operandi of GPs is due a serious rethink. Let us walk you through the world of social prescription and outline what role businesses can (and should) play in their employees’ health.

Social (as opposed to medical) prescription is the idea that small prescribed changes in people’s behaviour or habits can have dramatic effects on their health. Take for example, our patient with back pain. Sedentary lifestyles combined with low general activity levels is a major cause of aches and pain in office workers everywhere and was even identified by the ONS as a key contributor to the recent exodus of employees from the workforce. In this sense a doctor’s note to do some light cardio is much more effective than anti-inflammatory treatment because it takes aim at the cause, not symptom of the general malady.

Furthermore, if we look at the other cause of our patient’s back pain, sedentary lifestyle, we see a clear opportunity for business to help drive social prescription. Businesses should encourage their workers to get up and get moving. Standing up just once every hour can seriously reduce your risk of developing cancer or osteoporosis. Further, companies which allow and encourage their workers to get moving will see the real effects of social prescription on their bottom lines. Reducing worker sick days has a real potential to boost firm productivity. In the UK women lose 2.3% of their working hours to sickness. Funds consisting of firms which have embraced in-work health outperform their peers by over 2% every decade.

Social prescription is also a key strategy to wrestle with the challenges of an ageing population. Countries across the Global North are ageing rapidly and keeping workers and the retired healthy is a key aim of lawmakers. Establishing behaviours and habits to address health issues before they become chronic is far more sustainable than building a purely reactive healthcare system. Socially prescribing universally accessible ‘treatments’ such as walks, runs, and a healthy diet might seem trite at first glance, but it has a serious capacity to fix our nation’s health.

So, the questions must now be, how do we transition to a proactive social prescription model? What are the respective roles of government, business, and GPs in this new era of healthcare? Answering these questions might just lead to a healthier, happier society…

The Rebuttal: Shapps spins Erasure

Issue: What happens when the media notice you erased your former boss - a Prime Minister, no less - from history (and your photo)?

Context

Grant Shapps - he of the occasionally over-eager social media content - was today forced to scramble after it was noticed that a tweeted photo of himself posing in front of a Virgin Orbit rocket to celebrate today’s planned satellite launch in Cornwall used to include a picture of…Boris Johnson. It turns out the photo in question was taken during a June 2022 visit by the former Prime Minister and Shapps, when the latter was Transport Secretary. Adding insult to injury, today’s first ever satellite launch from European soil ‘failed at the final hurdle’, with the rocket failing to reach the required altitude (METAPHOR ALERT).

Shapps’ ‘line to take’

The following was delivered by a ‘source close to Grant Shapps’ (cough Shapps):

"Grant wasn’t aware anyone had edited the picture. He removed it as soon as it was pointed out. Obviously he wouldn’t endorse anyone rewriting history by removing the former PM from a picture. He was proud to serve in Boris' Government"

Line review

The photo misfire is the kind of small-bore issue that grinds the gears of any politician (or spad), especially one as usually sure-footed as Shapps. You’re out trying to capture some of the reflected glory of a significant event you have little to do with and someone goes and cocks it up by deploying the ‘ole departmental Photoshop where it’s not wanted. It is - chef’s kiss - a perfect web story, with guaranteed virality (just wait until everyone starts photoshopping stuff into the gap left by Boris).

Given that a story is going to be written it’s better to be in the story. These things happen, and that’s where the Shapps’ statement tries to go. But the third sentence - beginning with ‘Obviously he wouldn’t’ - commits the cardinal sin of repeating the allegation and should have been trimmed. Other than that, the line does the job: the principal didn’t do it, he took action, he was proud to serve (i.e. don’t hate me BoJo), etc. Indeed, sometimes all you can do is state the obvious and endure the copy.

The only potential problem is if Shapps or one of his spads did ask for the photo to be edited. Hostage to fortune anyone? We suspect not. But this is where a minister’s relationship with his civil servants is essential: if they like you any photoshop legerdemain should stay private. Should, we say.

Line rating

Blinder

Strong

Does the job ✅

Problematic

Piss poor

Key Environmental Takeaways from Rishi's Big Policy Outline

Listening to the party leaders’ speeches last week, it is important to think about what has been said (and what has not) about the environment. Rishi Sunak surprised many across the political divide by omitting any mention of the environment in his New Year’s speech, with the climate crisis not listed amongst his “five foundations on which to build a better future”.

Is the Prime Minister’s decision to focus on issues like inflation and the NHS a reflection of shifting public priorities? Certainly, the cost of living crisis has come to dominate the political and public discourse in recent months, and will continue to do so this year. Whilst resolving immediate issues from the looming recession to the NHS ‘permacrisis’ monopolizes the Government’s bandwidth, we can ill-afford to relegate climate change to a second-tier issue.

The climate crisis is not a distant nor ill-defined threat unlikely to affect the UK for decades (if at all). To take just one example, the unprecedented drought last year is projected to become a much more frequent event. It was announced last week that 2022 was the hottest year on record as we witnessed 40 degree heat in parts of the UK where it would be unthinkable just 30 years ago. Since the consensus view is that the cost of living crisis is unlikely to last very long and inflation is forecast to drop to just 3.9% by the end of this year, it seems a short-termist strategy to ignore the green agenda. Voters will not be distracted for long.

The Government is also making a key strategic mistake by refusing to see the cost of living crisis as linked to the lack of green investment. The UK still refuses to allow the construction of onshore wind which has been proven to provide cheaper and greener electricity than oil and natural gas combustion. In this sense, one of the fastest ways out of the twin fiscal and energy crises is to embrace green power.

What can we learn from Rishi Sunak’s speech then? If this was a political calculation that ‘green issues’ won’t play with the electorate this may yet prove to be flawed. What’s more, strong leadership means building a long term strategy to solve problems rather than ignoring them. And there’s no doubt that the climate crisis is a problem in need of some solutions. Let’s hope that this speech does not reflect the sum of Sunak’s environmental ambitions.